Monday, 11 April 2022 at 14:30 MS Teams

A presentation by Stefano Breschi (Professor of Applied Economics at the Department of Management and Technology at Bocconi University).

Which entrepreneurs benefit most from accelerator programs? In this paper, we argue that the value-added by startup accelerators depends critically on whether the knowledge these supporting institutions provide is complementary to or a substitute for that of the founding entrepreneurs themselves. As the main value-adding activity of accelerators is the paced and intense business training offered to participants, we hypothesize that such intervention is either redundant or not very beneficial if the entrepreneurial team already has a business education background. Conversely, accelerator programs are particularly efficient channels through which early-stage entrepreneurs, equipped with strong technological competence but lacking business knowledge, can access this valuable complementary resource. We test our ideas using a matched sample of 956 entrepreneurial teams, combining in­formation from Crunch­base and LinkedIn.

Stefano Breschi is Full Professor of Applied Economics at the Department of Management and Technology at Bocconi University. He is Director of ICRIOS research centre, Bocconi University. After obtaining a bachelor degree in Economics at Bocconi University, a Master Degree in "Technology, Policy and Innovation Management" at University of Limburg, Maastricht, he obtained a PhD in Economics at the University of Pavia. He is Associate editor of the journal Industrial and Corporate Change and Advisory editor of the journal Research Policy.

The seminar is in English.

This workshop is organised by TalTech Industrial project. TalTech Industrial has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 952410.