Résumé
In view of the success of external accelerator programs such as the Y Combinator and others, established organizations like Siemens, Telefonica, BMW and numerous others have established their own in-house accelerators. Their goal is to not only push internal innovative ideas, but also to maintain and strengthen their innovative employee’s identification with the organization. While closely studying the corporate accelerator of a leading automotive company, we discover, analyze and confirm ‘anomalies’ in participants’ identification with the organization during and after the accelerator program. In particular circumstances, members appear to cognitively ‘uncouple’ their accelerator projects from the organization and identify more with these projects than with the established organization during the accelerator program. Preliminary insights indicate that this ‘uncoupling’ may indeed lead to important unintended consequences in terms of lower organizational identification among its members afterwards. Successfully running a corporate accelerator may thus require an in-depth understanding and conscious management of organizational and project identification tensions.