Start-up learning process in accelerator programs

• Autor(a) principal: Gviniashvili, Giorgi
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/22200
• topic: Accelerators; Accelerator programs; Entrepreneurship; Entrepreneurial learning; Business knowledge; Incubation model; Start-up; Aceleradores de empresas; Programas de aceleração; Empreendedorismo; Aprendizagem empresarial; Mecanismos de incubação; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão

The modern world is shaped by rapid innovation and disruptive ideas. Start-ups are drivers of these innovations. They replace incumbent technologies, existent business models and in sum make the world a better place to live. However, nascent ventures still have a tendency to fail often due early stage challenges and problems. In order to help newly founded ventures to overcome early stage obstacles, in last decade accelerator programs were created. Accelerators provide entrepreneurship education to ventures’ founding teams and help them to transform their ideas into successful businesses. Despite the rapid proliferation of these programs worldwide, pervious literature is still descriptive of main features of accelerators and little is known which are main mechanisms to accelerate startups. This dissertation aims to explore if accelerators accelerate the learning process of participant ventures, and how and which mechanisms of accelerator programs impact the learning process. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews, from eleven participant ventures in one single Portuguese accelerator program, Building Global Innovators (BGI). The results suggest that accelerators in fact impact learning process of participant ventures. Therefore, the learning process is affected by time compression of accelerator programs and through two main mechanisms: through accelerator support and through cohort role, which consequently comprise two learning vehicles and one learning facilitator, each. Alongside several empirical implications, this study contributes to the advance of research about accelerator programs.