Enhancing entrepreneurial innovation through industry-led accelerators: corporate-new venture dynamics and organizational redesign in a port maritime ecosystem
This PhD dissertation studies the management and design of corporate accelerators, in particular, industry-led value chain corporate accelerators. I addressed a multi-faceted research question about the novelty, corporate impact, dynamics and design of industry-led accelerators. Using a longitudinal, inductive, multiple-case embedded research design that analyses the industrial accelerator interface, the relationships between incumbent firms and external new ventures and the R&D/innovation units of established firms in a port maritime complex, this dissertation addresses this multi-faceted research question and it makes five core contributions. First, it positions, for the first time, the corporate accelerator phenomena at the intersection of fundamental management research streams, including organizational design, dynamic capabilities and corporate entrepreneurship. Second, it conducts the first study of the promising model of industry-led accelerator by inductively generating a four-step framework of how these accelerators work: i) co-define a broad innovation remit, ii) generate an innovation funnel to attract start-ups and scale-ups, iii) mutual sensing via flexible matching iv) select for scale and investment. Third, it finds striking counter-intuitive evidence in that the industry-led accelerator not only accelerates external new ventures but rather the corporate partners themselves by triggering them to internalize the lean start-up method and redesign their R&D/innovation processes and routines. To explain this, I inductively developed a four-phases process model of corporate entrepreneurial capability-building, comprising: a) attracting, b) strategic fit sensing, c) shaping and d) internalizing. Fourth, this dissertation uncovers three novel tensions—internalization, implementation and role—at the incumbent – new venture interface and develops a new ecological and symbiotically-inspired framework for tension identification and mitigation in industrial acceleration contexts. Fifth, and finally, using the frameworks and process models developed, this dissertation proposes a new toolkit (industrial acceleration design canvas and workshops) to orient practitioners when strategizing, designing and sustaining corporate new venture ecosystem acceleration initiatives.
Enhancing entrepreneurial innovation through industry-led accelerators: corporate-new venture dynamics and organizational redesign in a port maritime ecosystem