Abstract
Corporate accelerators are on the rise and established companies from a diverse set of industries and regions have set up such startup support programs to predominantly pursue strategic goals. The purpose of this study is to shed light on the benefits of corporate accelerators from a corporate perspective and that of the participating startups. In order to do so, this in-depth single-site case study investigates the SAP Industry 4.0 Startup Program building upon an inductive research design with explorative nature. The authors qualitatively examine a newly established corporate accelerator program of one of the world’s largest enterprise software companies and provide valuable insights for both practitioners and scholars engaged in corporate accelerators. The benefits for startups participating in corporate accelerator programs can be linked to operational go-to-market acceleration in regards to product development, sales acceleration, as well as skill and knowledge development. Moreover, the startups receive benefits linked to strategic business development acceleration in the areas of strategy and business model improvements, pitching, financing, and strategic partner development. At the same time, corporate accelerators overall aim to increase the competitiveness of established companies running such programs by developing a product ecosystem and the brand, infusing startup culture into the organization and developing customer relationships.
Highlights
Since Y Combinator launched in 2005 as the first accelerator, this type of startup support program has quickly grown in popularity and become a global phenomenon
2) What are the benefits for established companies when running a corporate accelerator program?
The other five interviewees (Gioia, Corley, & Hamilton, 2013). During this were conducted with startups and their represent- process, we aimed to ensure the reliability of the atives, which were accelerated by SAP, and provid- coding and discussed our emerging data structure ed insights into their perspective on the benefits of with research colleagues not involved in the study corporate accelerator programs (Table 3)
Summary
Since Y Combinator launched in 2005 as the first accelerator, this type of startup support program has quickly grown in popularity and become a global phenomenon. The latest Global Accelerator Report identifies 579 accelerator programs worldwide supporting more than 11,000 startups (Gust, 2016). Accelerator programs, in general, apply the business model of providing funding (typically in the range of USD 15,000 to USD 30,000), mentorship, training, and office space over a period of three to six months to a cohort of up to ten startups in return for minority shares of equity – exact numbers vary by program. Startups are supposed to improve through, for example, industry connections, product validation through constant screening, feedback within the cohort and the exposure to investors (Cohen & Hochberg, 2014; Yu, 2016)
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