Discovering the entrepreneurial micro‐ecosystem: The case of a corporate accelerator

• Published date: 01 September 2020
• Date: 01 September 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/tie.22159
• Author: Constance Banc,Karim Messeghem

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Discovering the entrepreneurial micro-ecosystem: The case

of a corporate accelerator

Constance Banc | Karim Messeghem

Montpellier Research in Management—Labex

Entreprendre, University of Montpellier,

Montpellier Management Institute,

Montpellier Cedex 2, France

Correspondence

Constance Banc, Montpellier Research in

Management—Labex Entreprendre, University

of Montpellier, Montpellier Management

Institute, Vendémiaire Street, CS 19519,

34960 Montpellier Cedex 2, France.

Email: constance.banc@umontpellier.fr

Abstract

Faced with a proliferation of initiatives like corporate accelerators, entrepreneurial

ecosystems see emerge new spaces that we can call entrepreneurial micro-ecosys-

tems. A micro-ecosystem is a local open system interacting with the entrepreneurial

ecosystem and driven by an actor or group of actors capable of fostering dynamics of

innovation and entrepreneurship. The literature has tended to focus on the macro

and meso levels leaving behind the microlevel and the strategies implemented by the

actors that could lead to the creation of micro-ecosystems. In this study, we consider

corporate accelerators, still little studied, as entrepreneurial micro-ecosystems. We

propose to take a structural and strategic approach in order to better understand the

attributes and the strategies put in place by these actors from a multilevel approach.

A qualitative study was conducted on a corporate accelerator and the results reveal

the importance of strategic attributes in terms of legitimacy, coopetition, and busi-

ness model.

KEYWORDS

business model, coopetition, corporate accelerator, entrepreneurial ecosystem,

entrepreneurial micro-ecosystem, legitimacy

1|INTRODUCTION

The notion of entrepreneurial ecosystem has received an increasing

amount of attention these last several years, particularly in the field

of technology and innovation management (Scaringella &

Radziwon, 2018). The research on entrepreneurial ecosystems has

grown substantially (Malecki, 2018), and public authorities have

seized on this notion as useful for developing ambitious support

programs (Groth, Esposito, & Tse, 2015; Lukeš,Longo,&Zouhar,

2019). Universities as well have seen the potential of ecosystems

to facilitate technology transfer and create spin-offs (Good,

Knockaert, Soppe, & Wright, 2019). Even large established compa-

nies (Deutsche Bank, Barclay's, etc.) have been developing their

own accelerators or incubators to be part of the dynamics of inno-

vation and entrepreneurship (Shankar & Shepherd, 2019).In 2016,

INSEAD and 500 Startups offer a report on the commitment to

startups of the 500 largest public companies in the world.

This shows that 52.4% of these companies work with startups in

different ways and 24.4% are engaged through the creation of a

corporate incubator or accelerator.

Entrepreneurial ecosystems have been analyzed at different

levels in order to determine the interactions within these systems

(Isenberg, 2011; Simatupang, Schwab, & Lantu, 2015; Spigel, 2017).

For example, many studies have been conducted at the macro- or

meso-level, and from a structural perspective, to examine how they

are constructed on a national or regional scale (

Acs, Autio, & Szerb,

2014; Isenberg, 2011; Malecki, 2018; Spigel, 2017; Stam, 2015). To

our knowledge, however, few investigations have looked at the micro-

level, despite the emphasis of several authors on the influence that

individuals or groups of individuals exert in the formation and dynam-

ics of these ecosystems (

Acs, Stam, Audretsch, & O'Connor, 2017;

Audretsch & Belitski, 2017; Feld, 2012; Simatupang et al., 2015).

Recent studies have criticized, among other things, the lack of clear

units of analysis and explicit data on cause-and-effect relationships as

well as the static nature of existing frameworks (Colombo, Dagnino,

Lehmann, & Salmador, 2019). Essentially, the literature has not

DOI: 10.1002/tie.22159

Thunderbird Int. Bus. Rev.. 2020;62:593–605. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/tie © 2020 Wiley Periodicals LLC. 593