Corporate accelerators and Open Innovation: The Role of Absorptive Capacity. An Exploratory Case Study of the “Techstars Energy Accelerator in Partnership with Equinor”

Abstract

Incumbent firms are in general not likely to pursue disruptive business concepts and are often exposed to strong near-term pressures that discourage investments in new growth initiatives. Start-ups, however, exist naturally at the forefront of technology and new ways of working. Incumbents have realized the need to engage with start-ups if they want to absorb the start-ups’ knowledge. The emergence of corporate accelerators has provided incumbent firms with a new way of engaging with start-ups, which can prove to be an important source of external knowledge. Accelerators have some key features that distinguish them from other similar concepts, whereas the limited duration seems to be the one standing out the most. Furthermore, the corporate accelerators and accelerators share many of the same criteria, such as the application process, being fixed term and cohort based, as well as offering intensive mentoring, and stipends to the startups. This opens up for the opportunity to use literature on accelerators in the context of corporate accelerators. Furthermore, it seems that it exists a research gap in the theoretical foundations of corporate accelerators. Hence, that the existing studies on corporate accelerators do not use a consistent theoretical lens. In this thesis I have decided to use a conceptual framework based on the Open Innovation theory, complemented with the perspective of Absorptive Capacity. The thesis uses a case study design as the focus is on a single accelerator program and how incumbents absorb knowledge from start-ups. The aim of the study is to extensively explore and understand how incumbents absorb knowledge from start-ups. Furthermore, the thesis uses multiple sources of evidence such as semi-structured interviews with mentors and employees and secondary data from surveys to explore the research question. The thesis identifies ‘geographical proximity’ and using ‘mentors as gatekeepers’ as crucial ways for the incumbent firms’ capability to absorb knowledge from the start-ups through a corporate accelerator. Furthermore, the mentors’ ability to translate the technical information so that is understandable to the employees was identified as crucial in order to expand the pool of potential gatekeepers for the company’s absorptive capacity.