Designing the Successful Corporate Accelerator

Acknowledgments

In the preparation of this book, we have been so fortunate to have support and encouragement from colleagues and peers around the world. We are forever grateful to the people who took time to review this book and make it better, and to all of the people we interviewed who shared the good, the bad, and the ugly of running innovation programs.

We'd like to offer particular thanks to our fellow accelerator professionals, who gave us insight into their own struggles and ways of doing things, from colleagues at Columbia University like Daniel Goetzel and Dmytro Pokhilko; Murat Aktihanoglu and Jon Axelrod at Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator; Scott Howard at Share Ventures; Dustin Shay at Village Capital; KJ Singh and Matt Kozlov at TechStars; David Post and Marie Wieck at IBM; and many more.

To other friends who may have spoken with us just once but made an impact: It may have been a short conversation or a simple anecdote to you, but your guidance and confirmation of your own challenges and successes made the book much better. While we couldn't share all of the amazing stories, they absolutely informed our thinking and contributed to the result.

There were several people who provided crucial assistance in the actual writing and research process. We're looking at you, David Golding and Gabi Silver. Your dedication and hustle summarizing interviews, researching background information, reading drafts, and keeping us all on track made the writing process smoother ...