1st year PhD presentation - Juliane Moellmann

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Juliane Moellmann: 'Knowledge transfer in corporate accelerators and incubators   
Supervisors: Pernille Smith & Michael Zaggl
Discussants: Irene Pollach & Jakob Lauring

Abstract
Corporate accelerators and incubators represent structured programs established by medium-and large-sized organizations (Weiblen & Chesbrough, 2015; Pauwels et al., 2016; Shankar & Shepherd, 2019) to enhance their innovation activities through venture building and development (Phan et al., 2009). From the perspective of the corporation, it is assumed that accelerators can enhance corporate learning in that they can tap into new knowledge of the participating ventures (Moschner et al., 2019; Nesner et al., 2020). We know from anecdotal evidence that many corporations do not acquire sufficient knowledge from these programs and often decide to close them down (Heshmati & Shafiee, 2021). Being a new field of study, current research on corporate accelerators and incubators has focused on design elements of the programs (Becker & Gassmann, 2006; Kohler, 2016), the impact of the programs on participating ventures (Hallen et al., 2014; Chan et al., 2020), as well as the detailed description of the phenomena landscape in certain countries or industries (Szczukiewicz & Makowiec, 2021; Kulkov et al., 2020). However, there is still very limited research on the knowledge transfer between ventures and the corporation and how it unfolds in practice. This project focuses on the processes and practices used in the implementation of those programs to facilitate knowledge transfer between the participating ventures and the corporations. The knowledge transfer creates the basis for corporate learning and for the achievement of the strategic objectives of the program. The existing research on inter-organizational knowledge transfer studied different knowledge types, varying knowledge characteristics as well as a multitude of impact factors (Milagres & Burcharth, 2019) in the context of licensing agreements (Williams, 2007; Hagedoorn et al., 2009), joint ventures (Inkpen, 2008; Schildt et al., 2012), strategic alliances (Zhang et al., 2007; Ireland et al., 2002) as well as R&D collaboration agreements (Lee et al., 2010; Frankort, 2016). Those concepts and models will be translated on a conceptual level to the context of the structured support programs provided by corporate accelerators and incubators. With the help of interviews and observations in strategically focused programs, the used practices and their contribution to the transfer of knowledge shall be identified and compared across different programs.

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