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Accelerating Research on Accelerators
Session #: 117
Sponsor(s): (ENT, BPS, OMT)
Scheduled: Friday, Aug 9 2013 2:00PM - 4:30PM
WDW Swan Resort in Osprey 1
Organizer: Susan L. Cohen; U. of North Carolina;
Moderator: David Hsu; Wharton School;
Participant: Yael Hochberg; Northwestern U.;
Participant: Benjamin L. Hallen; London Business School;
Participant: Elana R. Feldman; Boston U.;
Participant: Nathan Furr; Brigham Young U.;
Participant: Susan L. Cohen; U. of North Carolina;Accelerators are a novel organizational form developed to accelerate organizational gestation. While accelerators have received considerable attention in the popular, academic research on accelerators remains embryonic. Intriguing questions about programs' effectiveness, proliferation and mechanisms abound. Moreover, accelerators offer a rich empirical setting to study core organizational concepts both in terms of the form (accelerator) and the activity they perform (organizational gestation). Thus research on accelerators might contribute not only to entrepreneurship, but also more broadly to organizational theory, strategy, network theory, and institutional theory.
The PDW format invites active participation and discussion, such as, what might be accelerated during these programs (e.g. the expansion of social networks, organizational learning or ecosystems); do accelerators produce the hypothesized results (e.g. Do they accelerate organization gestation effectively? What biases might they introduce?) Panelists and participants will discuss research opportunities and challenges, both as a group and then in small groups to foster interactive dialog about future research. Given the potentially large, yet heretofore underexploited research opportunity, the goal of this PDW is to bring together scholars on the cutting edge of research to accelerate research on accelerators.