Drivers of Corporate Learning through an Involvement in Business Accelerators: Insights from an Explorative Study in the Aerospace Sector

99 Pages·2020·1.06 MB·English

by  Jan Benedikt Elsner

Jan Benedikt Elsner
Drivers of Corporate
Learning through
an Involvement
in Business
Accelerators
Insights from an Explorative Study in
the Aerospace Sector
BestMasters
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Jan Benedikt Elsner
Drivers of Corporate
Learning through an
Involvement in Business
Accelerators
Insights from an Explorative Study
in the Aerospace Sector
Jan Benedikt Elsner
LEMEX
University of Bremen
Bremen, Germany
ISSN 2625­3577 ISSN 2625­3615 (electronic)
BestMasters
ISBN 978­3­658­28356­8 ISBN 978­3­658­28357­5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978­3­658­28357­5
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Acknowledgements
The development of this thesis would not have been possible without the
support of certain people I highly appreciate. First of all, I would like to
express my very great appreciation to Prof. Jörg Freiling, Head of the LE-
MEX Chair in Small Business and Entrepreneurship at University Bremen
for his valuable feedback and support, as well as to Dr. Aki Harima for her
outstanding supervision and guidance. Thanks to my former colleagues at
Airbus Defence & Space department of Performance & Improvement,
who initiated my fascination for business innovation. Doing research on
this particular topic was only possible thanks to excellent interview-part-
ners including Tanja Kufner, Guido Schwartz, Gisbert Ruehl and internal
experts (who preferred not to be mentioned by name). Thanks for taking
your time and sharing your experience and thoughts with me and the
readers of this book. Also, this thesis required a lot of effort, which was
only bearable thanks to the backing of Focke & Co and the new business
development team. Your support, expertise and trust while I was working
on this thesis as student employee was fantastic. Finally, I would like to
thank my family who since early days supported me in critical thinking and
gave me the strength and ambition to successfully develop this thesis.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction ................................................................................................. 1
2 Conceptual Background ............................................................................... 5
2.1 Business Accelerators .................................................................................. 5
2.1.1 Emergence of Business Accelerators ............................................... 5
2.1.2 Characteristics and Definition of Accelerator Programs .................. 6
2.1.3 Impact of Business Accelerators ...................................................... 8
2.1.4 Typologies of Accelerator Programs .............................................. 10
2.2 Corporate Engagement in the Startup Context ......................................... 13
2.2.1 The Role of Entrepreneurship ........................................................ 13
2.2.2 Incumbent Firms Challenged by Startups ...................................... 14
2.2.3 Startup Characteristics .................................................................. 16
2.2.4 Modes of Corporate Startup Engagement .................................... 17
2.3 Corporate Perspective on Accelerator Programs ...................................... 19
2.3.1 Corporate Strategies ...................................................................... 19
2.3.2 Relationships between Corporates and Accelerators ................... 20
2.4 Organizational Learning ........................................................................... 24
2.4.1 Knowledge-based Theory .............................................................. 25
2.4.2 Learning-based Theory .................................................................. 25
2.4.3 Organizational Learning Theory in the Context of Accelerators ... 29
3 Methodology ............................................................................................. 31
3.1 Research Design ........................................................................................ 31
3.2 Data Collection & Selection ....................................................................... 33
3.3 Data Analysis ............................................................................................ 37
4 Research Setting ........................................................................................ 39
4.1 Introduction to the Aerospace Industry .................................................... 39
4.2 Airbus Company ........................................................................................ 41
4.3 Startupbootcamp Accelerator .................................................................. 41
4.4 Airbus BizLab Accelerator ......................................................................... 42
VIII Table of Contents
5 Findings ..................................................................................................... 45
5.1 Startup Input ............................................................................................. 46
5.1.1 Startup Traits ................................................................................. 46
5.1.2 The Accelerator´s Attraction of Startups ....................................... 50
5.1.3 Selection of Participants ................................................................ 53
5.2 Exchange Processes in the Accelerator ..................................................... 54
5.2.1 Quality & Quantity of Exchange between Ventures ..................... 55
5.2.2 Perceived Risk of Opportunistic Behavior ..................................... 57
5.2.3 Scientific Analogies to the Exchange within Accelerators ............. 58
5.3 Transfer to the Corporate Organization ................................................... 59
5.3.1 Relationship between Corporate and Accelerator ........................ 60
5.3.2 Transformation Processes in the Context of Previous Literature . 61
5.4 Internal Corporate Processing .................................................................. 62
5.4.1 Internal Attitude towards Innovation ........................................... 63
5.4.2 Top Management Involvement ..................................................... 64
5.4.3 Resulting Actions ........................................................................... 66
5.4.4 Scientific Analogies to the Corporate Processing .......................... 68
6 Conclusion & Discussion ............................................................................. 71
6.1 Key Results ................................................................................................ 71
6.2 Implications ............................................................................................... 72
6.2.1 Theoretical Implications ................................................................ 72
6.2.2 Practical Implications ..................................................................... 73
6.3 Limitations ................................................................................................ 73
6.4 Future Outlook .......................................................................................... 75
Bibliography ................................................................................................. 77
List of Figures
Figure 1: Comparison between Incubators and Accelerators ................................ 7
Figure 2: Relationships between Agents within Corporate Accelerators ............ 21
Figure 3: Corporate Accelerator Model ............................................................... 22
Figure 4: Research Approach .............................................................................. 33
Figure 5: Corporate Learning process through an Involvement in Accelerator ... 45

List of Tables
Table 1: Typologies of Business Accelerators ...................................................... 12
Table 2: Data Sources .......................................................................................... 34
Table 3: Observed Conferences and Events ......................................................... 36

List of Abbreviations
AIRBUS DS: Airbus Defence & Space
CEO: Chief Executive Office
MVP: Minimum Viable Product
NADCAP: National Aerospace and Defense Contractors
Accreditation Program
RQ: Research Question
S&P: Standard & Poor`s
STE: Smart Transportation and Energy
US: United States of America
1 Introduction
Over the last years, accelerators programs have become a popular type
of business support services. Having its origin in business incubation mod-
els, accelerators offer cohorts of startups the opportunity to participate
in a mentoring-driven program, which culminates in a public presentation
of business ideas (Cohen & Hochberg, 2014). While early programs mainly
focused on the exchange of equity stakes for acceleration services, there
is an increasing number of business accelerators, following other ap-
proaches. This led to the development of diverse accelerator typologies
with different characteristics (Pauwels et al., 2016; Clarysse and
Yusubova, 2014; Dempwolf, Auer and D`Ippolito, 2014).
A recent trend is the growing involvement of incumbent corporations,
who participate and even initiate own programs (Kohler, 2016). Never-
theless, previous research mainly emphasized the impact of business ac-
celerators on participating ventures (Smith & Hannigan, 2015; Hallen, Bir-
mingham & Cohen, 2014; Gonzales-Uribe & Leatherbee, 2016) and
startup ecosystems (Fehder & Hochberg, 2018; Goswami, Mitchell & Bha-
gavutala, 2017; Bliemel et al. 2016), providing only limited scientific evi-
dence on the impact on involved corporations.
In fact, large and established corporations have to deal with several issues
which hinder the development of disruptive innovation and the explora-
tion new knowledge (March, 1991; Christensen, 2016). On the other side,
startups are often related to a certain entrepreneurial mindset which can
be beneficial for the development of innovation within uncertain business
environments (Haynie et al., 2010; Brown & Eisenhardt, 1999; Ries, 2011).
Corporates are increasingly seeking for collaboration modes with startups
in order to close this innovation gap (Miller and Bound, 2011; Löher et al.,
2017; Chesbrough, 2010). In their involvement in business accelerators,
© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2020
J. B. Elsner, Drivers of Corporate Learning through an
Involvement in Business Accelerators, BestMasters,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-28357-5_1