The multi-dimensional impacts of business accelerators: What does the research tell us?

Practitioners and academic researchers studying business accelerators have produced a substantial number of studies on accelerators. The online scholastic archive Social Science Research Network (SSRN), for instance, lists almost 800 entries on the topic since 2005, with over two-thirds of the posts dated 2018 or later.

This vast body of work is fragmented, however. And critical insights on the effects business accelerators have on the economy remain in disciplinary silos, so researchers in disparate disciplines—ranging from finance to entrepreneurship and business strategy—may be unaware of work published outside their own disciplinary outlets. Furthermore, most research on the topic is specific to a particular research area—training programmes for entrepreneurs in developing countries, for example.

This review aims to bridge the disciplinary divides in order to take stock of the literature on the multi-dimensional impacts of business accelerators and to advance a guide for future research.