Theme
Acceleration

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"The Gender Lens Incubation and Acceleration (GLIA) toolkit is an interactive resource, to guide accelerators and incubators (or 'intermediaries') through the journey of uncovering how our activities impact, and are experienced by, different gendered groups. This toolkit will equip us as intermediaries with the mindset, strategies, and frameworks to amend and improve both our organisation and program to increase accessibility and inclusivity of our work by all genders."

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"This paper analyzes the kind of knowledge that facilitates hatching and leveraging of technologies through the incubation process. Four corporate incubator types can be distinguished according to their source and type of technology: fast-profit incubators, market incubators, leveraging incubators, and in-sourcing incubators. Applying the knowledge-based view of the firm, four modes of mainly tacit knowledge were identified in respect to the different incubator types: (1) entrepreneurial knowledge, (2) organizational knowledge, (3) technological knowledge, and (4) complementary market knowledge. Knowledge strategies include both the leveraging of internal knowledge as well as the in-sourcing of external knowledge for the firm through the corporate incubator. The research is based on an analysis of a European Commission dataset from a benchmarking survey of 77 incubators as well as 52 interviews in 25 large technology-driven corporations in Europe and the United States."

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"The GALI team consistently hears questions from accelerators and others in the field about financial sustainability. In this brief, we ask: How do accelerators fund their programs, and how do different funding profiles relate to different accelerator offerings?"

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"In this brief, we respond to a question from the Argidius Foundation about the return on investment for accelerators: At the Argidius Foundation, we assess the return on total investment (ROTI) of the capacity development programs that we support. What can your data tell us about the return on investment for accelerator programs?"

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"In this data brief, we explore financing for ventures working in different regions and sectors around the world using data from the Entrepreneurship Database Program. In this report, we respond to a question from the Global Innovation Fund about startup financing by sector and geography: At the Global Innovation Fund, we are focused on supporting entrepreneurs and innovators in markets where individuals earn less than $5 per day. What sectors/verticals and what geographies are typically getting funding in the data that you're seeing?"

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"In this brief, we use data from the Entrepreneurship Acceleration Research Initiative in order to respond to the following question by Steve Cumming of the MasterCard Foundation about Youth Entrepreneurship: At The MasterCard Foundation, we have a portfolio of youth entrepreneurship projects that we support in Sub Saharan Africa. We're always looking for data to better understand the space and to inform our programming. I'm wondering if you could share any data by ages 18-24 and 25-30, and by African country or region if possible. Do you see anything interesting under these parameters?"

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"Asia is facing simultaneously huge growth potential and increasing inequalities, with often weak national solutions to the social issues at hand. Social purpose organisations (SPOs) – which includes but are not limited to non-profit organisations, charities and social enterprises - are seen to solve these issues sustainably. Social incubation is seen as a tool to help SPOs grow and potentially build a pipeline for social investors. Yet, how does social incubation in Asia work? The insights presented here are the first insights from surveying 15 social incubators in Indonesia, Thailand, India, Japan, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore which have existed for at least two years."

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"This article presents an innovative method of engaging MBA students in a capstone course by offering a customizable project with businesses that are currently progressing through a regional, independent incubator, or accelerator program. We include various project options but focus on customizable capstone project alternatives to traditional business strategy simulations and case study methods. Namely, our innovative learning solution is a mock consulting project which drives innovation and fosters strategic collaboration between small business owners, university faculty, and MBA students while providing business strategy experience and generating positive exposure for both the university and the small businesses involved. Our method includes pairing MBA students with participating startup businesses and allowing the soon-to-be MBAs an opportunity to garner consulting experience while simultaneously serving the needs of the businesses in the accelerator. Accordingly, MBA students act as consultants to business owners and prepare detailed weekly briefings to inform stakeholders within the university and the constituent businesses. By breaching the typical capstone project parameters, the mock consulting option provides for experiential and applied learning experiences for MBA students and develops higher order strategic thinking by challenging them to work hand-in-hand with real startups."

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"Social enterprises that not only deliver financial but also social and environmental returns for those at the 'bottom of the pyramid' (BOP) and society as a whole are being promoted as an integral solution towards sustainable development and inclusive growth. This study sets out a market assessment on the incubators and impact investors that act as enablers of the social enterprise ecosystem in the India. It doing so it clarifies the services these different organizations provide, their business models and sector wise, geographic and service related gaps, as well as the challenges they face from the individual perspectives of system enablers. It draws on a series of stakeholder consultations including an online survey, and desk research of a sample of 16 social enterprise incubators and 33 impact investors active in the country."

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"A fundamental challenge for new ventures is overcoming liabilities of newness - particularly, lack of relevant knowledge. Accelerators, intense, time-compressed entrepreneurial programs, attempt to alleviate these liabilities by providing ventures with intensive learning. While accelerators have rapidly emerged as prominent players in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, entrepreneurs, policy makers, and other practitioners have continued to raise questions about their efficacy. Mirroring such concerns, extant organizational theories offer competing predictions about whether and for which ventures accelerator participation might be beneficial. Drawing on hybrid empirical methods that triangulate across multiple quantitative and qualitative analyses, we consistently find evidence that many accelerators do indeed aid and accelerate venture development and that their effects are neither due purely to selection or credentialing. Intriguingly, our results also indicate that accelerator participation complements rather than substitutes for many forms of prior founder experience (e.g., having worked for a company that produces a lot of startups). Overall, we contribute by pioneering work on the nature and outcomes of accelerators, offering insight into the fundamental value of intensive indirect learning (vs direct learning) in new ventures and extending understanding of how organizations may speed products and services to market."

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