It's all about opportunities: sourcing and selection of new ventures to accelerate innovation

Abstract

One‐fifth of the global companies complement their R&D activities with the use of corporate accelerators. Corporate accelerators are claimed to foster innovativeness by engaging with startups. However, we know little about how they work. The few previous studies about corporate accelerators have mainly focused on the design of corporate accelerators or the description of the phenomenon itself, but we have limited insights into the underlying mechanisms of corporate acceleration. This in‐depth qualitative case study of a large German corporation in the automotive sector opens up how the sourcing and selection of new ventures accelerates corporate innovation. The unique access to internal data revealed the mechanisms that accelerate innovation by enhancing the corporate's entrepreneurial behavior. The study thereby contributes to understanding modes of corporate entrepreneurship and their function in the broader open innovation context, opening the black box of corporate acceleration, as well as giving valuable insights to R&D and innovation managers on the sourcing and selection process of startups.