Designing the Successful Corporate Accelerator

CHAPTER 8RESOURCES

Source: John Kander¹

Creating a strategy is often the easy part, the execution is where most big companies struggle. Achieving the strategic vision for an accelerator is more complicated than it seems at first. It requires gaining deep internal buy-in, long-term commitment to experiment and learn, finding and retaining the right internal talent who understand both your company and the startup world, recruiting top-tier startups that are appropriately aligned with your strategic goals achieving results for both the company and the participating startups – this is an enormous undertaking! It's a lot of work and requires the right financial and talent resources to make it happen. When the time comes to get to work building the corporate accelerator, just like a startup, you need two key resources: people and money.

YOUR ACCELERATOR TEAM

Finding and retaining the right talent for corporate innovation programs is always an issue, and it is even more pronounced with accelerator programs. “My suggestion is really to get buy in around trying a few different things, get the capital to do it, get the resources to do it,” says Jenny Fielding, managing director of Techstars–New York City and The Fund. “Then go pick partners who have done it before. Don't just promote someone within who doesn't have an innovation bone in his or her body. Make sure that you get someone ...