In search of innovation, incumbent firms are leveraging the creativity, knowledge and capabilities of corporate accelerators and are boosting their innovation engines by collaborating with startups. While this form of collaboration network with its heterogeneous partners is theoretically compelling and growing in popularity practically, the majority of corporate accelerators fails to deliver the desired results. Existing research still lacks an in-depth exploration of corporate accelerators explaining and suggesting how failure and challenges of incumbent firms can be overcome. Twenty-eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with managers and innovation experts across industries and within one of Europe’s biggest corporate accelerators. This study contributes to the field of open innovation and collaboration networks by expanding our knowledge about challenges of corporate accelerators and in particular to decode the difficulties that occur during the different phases of accelerator programmes. Based on the findings, guidelines for practitioners are presented to enhance organisational learning and innovation performance for incumbent firms.

中文翻译：

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从受欢迎到盈利：现有企业与外部企业加速器的经验和挑战

为了寻求创新，现有公司正在利用企业加速器的创造力、知识和能力，并通过与初创公司合作来提升他们的创新引擎。虽然这种形式的协作网络与其异构合作伙伴在理论上具有吸引力并且在实践中越来越受欢迎，但大多数企业加速器未能提供预期的结果。现有研究仍然缺乏对企业加速器的深入探索，解释和建议如何克服现有公司的失败和挑战。在欧洲最大的企业加速器之一中，对跨行业的经理和创新专家进行了 28 次半结构化访谈。这项研究通过扩展我们对企业加速器挑战的知识，特别是解码加速器计划不同阶段出现的困难，为开放式创新和协作网络领域做出了贡献。根据调查结果，提出了从业者指南，以提高现有公司的组织学习和创新绩效。