Corporate Accelerator Programmes - the good, the bad and the ugly

by Startacus Admin

The 'Whitespace Ventures Corporate Innovation Club' has published its first report, compiling insights and ideas from leading voices in corporate innovation.

Titled The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Corporate Accelerator Programmes, the report brings together key themes from the latest bi-monthly gathering of the Whitespace Ventures Corporate Innovation Club members. The Club is formed of a community of over 40 international and global corporate brands, with representatives convening bi-monthly to learn form each other – with regard to both successes and failures – while digesting the insights of specially invited expert guests.

The September 28^th meeting discussed important questions; why implement a corporate Accelerator programme? How do start-ups see corporate Accelerators? How should a corporate deliver an accelerator beneficial for both start-ups and its own interests? Additionally, the meeting resulted in practical insights into making a corporate Accelerator productive and sustainable. Meanwhile, the disconnect between start-ups and corporations was explored during the gathering.

“Corporations run Accelerator programmes for three main reasons; brand storytelling, IP incubation or to spark different thinking. To get the most out of an Accelerator programme the corporation needs to have well-defined give/gets and needs to be transparent with this upfront,” underlines Andrew Webber, the Chair of the Whitespace Ventures Corporate Innovation Club.

Whitespace Ventures is focused on helping high growth technology startups build a strong and repeatable business as quickly as possible. They aim to do this by learning from startups and Corporates that they have closely partnered with, combined with the experience of the Whitespace founders. 

Startupbootcamp Chief Content Officer and an invited speaker at the meeting, Misha de Sterke, was very impressed by the quality and the outcomes of the dialogue which took place during the meeting. “C-suite executives have a different mindset. They are risk averse and they expect predictable returns. That’s logical when you’re running day to day business. In Corporate Accelerator programmes the goal is to search for new business models in which traditional accounting metrics are irrelevant. The best approach here is to craft workable metrics to record impact and result.”

The Club then convened again on the 23^rd of November and the main focus of this meeting was the topic of 'Internal Innovation in Corporations'. We look forward to finding out what key themes were discussed and explored.
 

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Published on: 29th November 2017