Open Access

Christoph J. Selig, Nicolai Heinzelmann, Sebastian Kohlhase, Guido H. Baltes

• Today’s markets are characterized by fast and radical changes, posing an essential challenge to established companies. Startups, yet, seem to be more capable in developing radical innovations to succeed in those volatile markets. Thus, established companies started to experiment with various approaches to implement startup-like structures in their organization. Internal corporate accelerators (ICAs) are a novel form of corporate venturing, aiming to foster bottom-up innovations through intrapreneurship. However, ICAs still lack empirical investigations. This work contributes to a deeper understanding of the interface between the ICA and the core organization and the respective support activities (resource access and support services) that create an innovation-supportive work environment for the intrapreneurial team. The results of this qualitative study, comprising 12 interviews with ICA teams out of two German high-tech companies, show that the resources provided by ICAs differ from the support activities of external accelerators. Further, the study shows that some resources show both supportive as well as obstructive potential for the intrapreneurial teams within the ICA.