Corporate Accelerators In Family Firms – A Conceptual View On Their Design

Abstract

Corporate accelerators (CAs) have become increasingly popular in both research and practice. In the past, analyses of CAs have centered on organizations in general, but those analyses focused on the particularities of CAs rather than the firms’ contexts. With regard to firm-specific contexts, a growing number of family firms in Germany have started CAs in recent years. Family firms are known for their idiosyncrasies due to the family’s involvement, which is argued to affect cooperation between family firms and start-ups. We claim that CAs also differ in the context of family firms. Taking a family firm specific perspective on corporate entrepreneurship, we argue that the design of family firms’ CAs is influenced by these firms’ idiosyncrasies. By connecting this perspective with general CA design dimensions, we conceptually derive family firm specific CA designs and discuss their implications for CAs in general and for CAs in the context of family firms.