Résumé

In view of the success of accelerator programs such as the Y Combinator and many others, established organizations like Siemens, ING, Telefonica and numerous others have begun to establish their own in-house accelerators as a favored approach to foster innovative renewal and to bind entrepreneurial members to the organization. While prior work on corporate accelerators has explored differences in accelerator structures and processes, we explore how being embedded in the context of an established organization creates particular tensions and challenges. More specifically, we argue that in-house corporate accelerators and their projects represent new organizational entities with their own identities, which may be perceived and experienced as quite distinct from the established organization. Members may thus cognitively uncouple the accelerator from the organization and possibly identify more with their accelerator projects than to the established organization. Thus, in spite of the current enthusiasm for corporate accelerators, it is unclear whether they have unambiguously positive effects. Preliminary insights from an in-house accelerator of a leading automotive company indicate that these tensions may indeed lead to important unintended consequences in terms of lower organizational identification among its members. Successfully running a corporate accelerator may thus require a better understanding and conscious management of organizational and project identification dynamics.

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