Conceptual Background

Previous literature on business accelerators can be related to four different fields: (1) Explaining the emergence of business accelerators (Miller & Bound, 2011; Bruneel et al. 2012); (2) Defining the key characteristics of business accelerators and comparing them with other startup support models (Cohen, 2013; Cohen & Hochberg, 2014); (3) analyzing the impact of business accelerators on participating ventures and the external business environment (Hallen, Birmingham & Cohen, 2014; Smith and Hannigan 2015; Fehder & Hochberg, 2018; Gonzales-Uribe & Leatherbee, 2016); (4) Developing sub-categories and typologies of business accelerators (Dempwolf, Auer & D`Ippolito, 2014; Clarysse & Yusubova, 2014; Clarysse, Wright & Van Hove, 2015; Pauwels et al, 2016). The following chapter provides a structured overview on these concepts in order to reflect the current state of research on business accelerators.