The Mission Comes First: Exploring the Mechanisms of Organizational Sponsorship for the Acceleration of Social Start-Ups

Manhart, Niklas Article The Mission Comes First: Exploring the Mechanisms of Organizational Sponsorship for the Acceleration of Social Start-Ups Junior Management Science (JUMS) Provided in Cooperation with: Junior Management Science e. V. Suggested Citation: Manhart, Niklas (2022) : The Mission Comes First: Exploring the Mechanisms of Organizational Sponsorship for the Acceleration of Social Start-Ups, Junior Management Science (JUMS), ISSN 2942-1861, Junior Management Science e. V., Planegg, Vol. 7, Iss. 2, pp. 289-337, https://doi.org/10.5282/jums/v7i2pp289-337 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/294986 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your personal and scholarly purposes. You are not to copy documents for public or commercial purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Junior Management Science 7(2) (2022) 289-337 Junior Management Science journal homepage: www.jums.academy The Mission Comes First: Exploring the Mechanisms of Organizational Sponsorship for the Acceleration of Social Start-Ups Niklas Manhart Technische Universität München Abstract A significant number of incubators and accelerators have emerged to support start-ups aiming to solve societal or environmental problems. However, there is still limited understanding of how these ventures perceive the value proposition of incubators and accelerators – and whether their support needs differ from conventional start-ups. This study uses the framework of organizational sponsorship to explore the acceleration of social start-ups. It is based on in-depth interviews with the founders of 10 start-ups from an impact-oriented incubator in Duisburg, Germany. Through an inductive case study, this research generates three main insights. First, the social-mission focus of these ventures leads to significant differences as compared to commercial ventures. Second, social start-ups profit more from intangible resources such as social capital than from tangible resources such as seed funding. Third, incubators and accelerators need to adapt their offerings to address the needs of social start-ups. This study presents the first systematic assessment of incubator and accelerator services from the perspective of social start-ups. Its main theoretical contribution is to extend the organizational sponsorship framework by proposing a novel support mechanism: impact acceleration. Keywords: Business incubation; start-up accelerators; social entrepreneurship; social start-ups; organizational sponsorship. 1. Introduction The history of social entrepreneurship dates back to the 1980s – as do initiatives to support it. The Ashoka Fellowship, called “the pioneer of the accelerator model” (Pandey, Lall, Pandey, & Ahlawat,2017, p. 3), started to support social entrepreneurs in India in 1981. The world’s first impact accelerator Echoing Green opened in London in 1987 (Casasnovas & Bruno,2013, p. 185). In recent years, the popularity of social start-ups – early-stage ventures performing a commercial activity in pursuit of social goals (Doherty, Haugh, & Lyon,2014, p. 420) – has increased significantly. Several new programs, academies, and coworking spaces have been created to support the incubation of early-stage social ventures (Miller & Stacey,2014). The shift towards social impact has been particularly noticeable in the German start-up ecosystem. The German Social Entrepreneurship Network spun off from the German Start-up Association in 2017 (www.send-ev.de). Germany’s primary start-up conference Bits & Pretzels chose “impact” as its motto in 2019, with social entrepreneurs on stage during its opening ceremony (Bruckschlögl,2019, September 29). New accelerator programs such as Respond (www.respondaccelerator.com), F-Lane (www.f-lane.com), and the Impact Factory (www.impact-factory.de) have launched to support social start-ups.1Even the Catholic Church has opened a “social hub” in Frankfurt (www.villa-gruendergeist.de). These developments are indicative of a broader trend. In 2019, half the incubators and accelerators in Germany (46%) supported organizations with significant social or environmental impact; across Europe, the share of incubators partially or only supporting social start-ups was 57% (SIM, 2020). The growing popularity of social venture incubation has had a transformative effect on the entrepreneurial support landscape. Despite this flurry of activity, there is still comparatively limited research on incubators and accelerators targeting so1Disclosure notice: The author of this thesis has been involved in launching the Impact Factory, the research setting of this study, in his role at the Beisheim Foundation, which is the main funder of the program together with the KfW Foundation and Franz Haniel & Cie. GmbH. This thesis has been authored in a personal capacity and all views expressed are the author’s own. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5282/jums/v7i2pp289-337 N. Manhart /Junior Management Science 7(2) (2022) 289-337290 cial start-ups (Crisan, Salant ,˘ a, Beleiu, Bordean, & Bunduchi, 2019;J. Hausberg & Korreck,2017). The existing studies on the acceleration of social start-ups primarily offer descriptions and typologies, often by practitioners or consultancies. By contrast, the social incubation process remains unexplored: Aside from a study by Pandey et al. (2017), little is known about how social start-ups assess the value of incubators and accelerators. This uncertainty has practical implications. Public and private funders are currently investing considerable resources in supporting social start-ups. However, whether these organizations require a different support model than traditional start-ups remains unclear (J. Hausberg & Korreck, 2017, p. 13). This uncertainty can affect the outcomes of these support programs, as the design of accelerators influences the performance of their ventures (C. S. R. Chan, Patel, & Phan,2020;Cohen, Bingham, & Hallen,2019). Studying this novel phenomenon can also contribute to the theoretical understanding of incubators and accelerators in the following two ways: The first regards the process of acceleration. For decades, researchers have treated incubators as a black box (Hackett & Dilts,2008). Multiple authors have called for less focus on their form (organizational features) and more focus on their mechanisms and activities (Colombo, Rossi-Lamastra, & Wright,2018;Crisan et al., 2019;Shankar & Clausen,2020). The second regards their specialization. As incubators and accelerators are becoming more popular, there is growing interest in the organizational contexts or sectors in which they operate (J. P. Hausberg & Korreck,2021;Lall, Chen, & Roberts,2020). The context of an impact-oriented accelerator is a rich opportunity to “examine accelerators more in depth across different groups of participants, contexts, and periods of time” (Crisan et al.,2019, p. 23). The purpose of this thesis is to explore how incubators and accelerators can support the acceleration of start-ups aiming to solve societal or environmental challenges. Therefore, this thesis examines how these nascent ventures perceive the activities and services of incubators and accelerators. To gain a holistic understanding of the acceleration process, this thesis explores how the characteristics of social start-ups affect their support needs – and why they join a support program in the first place. Two fundamental research decisions helped this study to address these questions. The first was the use of social startups as the units of analysis. Following Colombo et al. (2018, p. 195), who call it “one of the most promising research avenues in the field of accelerators”, this study adopted the perspective of the beneficiaries of support activities. Thereby, it explored how incubators and accelerators create value for start-ups. The second research decision was to employ the emerging theory of organizational sponsorship. Originally developed by Flynn (1993a,1993b) and popularized by Amezcua, Grimes, Bradley, and Wiklund (2013), organizational sponsorship describes how sponsors can support the establishment and growth of young organizations. By illustrating the mechanisms incubators and accelerators use to provide resources and mediate between start-ups and their environment, it can serve as a theoretical lens to assess how social start-ups perceive entrepreneurial support activities. Therefore, the framework seems well suited to study the acceleration of social start-ups (for a recent review, see Breivik-Meyer,2020). Furthermore, this study employed an inductive case study design based on Eisenhardt (1989). The primary data sources were in-depth interviews with 10 founders of social start-ups from the Impact Factory, an impact-oriented incubator in Duisburg, Germany. The structured interviews included a combination of open-ended questions and a questionnaire about the most relevant incubator and accelerator services. These activities were identified by reviewing 26 studies of incubators and accelerators for conventional and social start-ups. The qualitative interview data were coded on a within-case and cross-case basis to identify novel findings and emerging concepts. With the aid of this research approach, this study suggests four major findings. First, it systematically describes the services provided to social start-ups by incubators and accelerators. Second, it explores how social start-ups at two stages of development perceive the value of these interventions in addressing their resource needs. It demonstrates that social start-ups highly value intangible resources such as social capital and knowledge, whereas the provision of tangible resources, such as seed capital, has a lower priority than for conventional start-ups. Third, it proposes a novel support mechanism called impact acceleration, which specifically addresses their support needs. Finally, this thesis explores how social start-ups determine the balance between the benefits of sponsorship and entrepreneurial self-reliance. This study contributes to three streams of literature: 1) Regarding social entrepreneurship, it illustrates how the social-mission focus of these start-ups is manifested through hybridity, prioritization of the purpose, and a focus on measurable impact. 2) Regarding incubators and accelerators, it suggests that the services provided by these institutions are not sufficient for social start-ups. As a result, this study argues that the acceleration of social start-ups requires organizational sponsors to tailor their services to the unique characteristics of these ventures. 3) Regarding organizational sponsorship, it observes how the predominant focus on survival fails to capture the reality of resilient ventures such as social start-ups. The study is structured in four parts. The following section introduces the theoretical background and its key concepts by drawing on three literature streams. The subsequent section illustrates the research design and the approach for collecting and analyzing data, leading up to the analytical model for the acceleration of social start-ups (Figure 1in Section 3.5). The results are then presented along four thematic dimensions. The final section discusses how these findings contribute to the existing literature – as well as limitations and opportunities for future research. Finally, this study covers the period from June 2019 to October 2020. How the social start-ups experienced the Im- N. Manhart /Junior Management Science 7(2) (2022) 289-337 291 pact Factory was therefore affected by the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, although the interviewees mentioned its effects surprisingly rarely. This aspect is further discussed in the limitations section at the end of the study. 2. Theoretical Background This section draws on three emerging streams of literature to establish the theoretical framework for this study: First, it defines social start-ups in contrast to conventional start-ups. Second, it reviews the existing research on incubators and accelerators – including both conventional ones and those that support social start-ups. Third, it introduces the mechanisms of organizational sponsorship as a theoretical lens to study the acceleration of social start-ups. Finally, it compiles an exemplary services portfolio to help structure the data collection and data analysis. 2.1. Social Start-Ups Social start-ups are the primary units of analysis of this study. Before exploring the role incubators and accelerators play in accelerating their growth, this section addresses two questions: What distinguishes social start-ups from conventional start-ups, and what obstacles do social start-ups face when scaling their impact and business models? 2.1.1. Defining Social Start-Ups Social entrepreneurship has become a prominent phenomenon in response to growing societal and environmental challenges. The EU Commission has estimated that Germany is home to between a few hundred and more than 100,000 social enterprises (Wilkinson,2015, p. 29). Another study has estimated their number in Germany to be between 1,700 and 70,000 (evers & jung,2016, p. 5). This broad range reflects conceptual ambiguity: Although the recent academic interest in social entrepreneurship has been considerable, its definition remains disputed (Dacin, Dacin, & Matear,2010; Gupta, Chauhan, Paul, & Jaiswal,2020;Mair & Marti,2006; Zahra, Gedajlovic, Neubaum, & Shulman,2009). Counting no less than 37 definitions, a literature review recommended focusing on missionor outcome-based definitions – rather than on the individual characteristics of social entrepreneurs or their operating sectors, processes, or resources – to avoid a “debate that has no resolution” (Dacin et al.,2010, p. 42). Consequently, the boundaries of social start-ups in this study are defined by two constituent elements: a “prime strategic focus on social impact” and an innovative and entrepreneurial approach to achieving their mission (Nicholls, 2006, p. 13). Another useful way to conceptualize the hybrid nature of social enterprises is the double bottom line: Social enterprises aim at mission accomplishment, or “social value creation,” and financial sustainability, or “economic value creation” (Alter,2003, p. 8). This duality of objectives – and the performing tension (W. K. Smith & Lewis,2011, p. 388) inherent in pursuing a social mission and exploiting commercial opportunities – is a central theme in analyzing the support needs of social start-ups. A related – and contested – question is the distinction between social entrepreneurship and conventional, or commercial, entrepreneurship. While there are strong indications for a “continuum ranging from purely social to purely economic” (Austin, Stevenson, & Wei-Skillern,2012, p. 372), the literature is divided on this issue (see Gupta et al.,2020, for a review). Clearly, there are parallels, such as opportunity recognition, risk tolerance, innovation, network-building capabilities, and continuous learning (Dees,1998;Perrini & Vurro,2006). Simultaneously, most researchers regard the social mission as the key difference between conventional entrepreneurs, who seek to generate economic profits and shareholder wealth, and social entrepreneurs, who apply business principles to achieve a social mission (Dacin et al., 2010, p. 44). It may appear tautological to refer to the social mission of social entrepreneurs to distinguish them from their commercial counterparts. However, Santos (2012) has argued that all entrepreneurs face a trade-off between “value creation” at the societal level and economic “value capture” at the unit level because organizations can only maximize one of the two dimensions in the same organizational unit (see also Mair & Marti,2006). This characteristic of social enterprises is reflected by the start-ups in this study, which all share a “clear social purpose [as]the driving force for the inception of the enterprise,” resulting in a “social mission that is integral, not tangential to, the enterprise” (Wilson & Post,2013, p. 723). The centrality of this self-defined “social mission coupled with a market-based method,” creates “a context of intention pervading all other design decisions” of the nascent enterprise (Wilson & Post,2013, p. 726) – with a direct impact on its resource needs and the design of appropriate support programs. Consequently, this thesis employs a broad definition of social start-ups as early-stage ventures that pursue social value creation through innovative and market-oriented solutions (adapted from Casasnovas & Bruno,2013, p. 177). The first part of the definition, “early-stage,” refers to the development stage of ventures, rather than to their age. As explained in the methods section, this study focused on startups beyond the ideation stage, which have already validated that their product or service fulfills a real societal need (socalled proof of concept) but have not yet significantly increased their headcount or revenue. As to the other parts of the definition (“social value,” “innovative,” and “marketoriented”), it is beyond the scope of this study to define them. Rather, these concepts are illustrated empirically through a case study of 10 nascent ventures that all target a societal or environmental challenge with a novel product or service. Regarding terminology, in the literature and public discourse, “social” and “impact” are often used interchangeably to describe organizations of this kind. Given that “impact” is an even broader term than “social,” this study refers to such organizations as “social start-ups.” N. Manhart /Junior Management Science 7(2) (2022) 289-337292 2.1.2. Scaling Social Start-Ups All start-ups face challenging conditions in the first years of their existence, causing them to fail at a higher rate than incumbents (Triebel, Schikora, Graske, & Sopper,2018). The vulnerability of new organizations has been attributed to the liability of newness (Stinchcombe,1965) and the liability of smallness (Aldrich,1986). These challenges are especially evident for social start-ups, which have been called “a very peculiar and fragile breed of start-ups” (J. Hausberg & Korreck,2017, p. 2). The resource needs of social start-ups (evaluated in Section 4.2) become apparent when social entrepreneurs attempt to scale. Although it can be argued that “maximum impact may best be achieved by staying small and local” (Nicholls,2006, p. 21), most social enterprises seek to achieve impact on a wider scale. A poll of social entrepreneurs in Germany indicated that 87% intended to scale, 9% were undecided, and only 3% wished to stay small (DSEM,2020, p. 43). However, only few social start-ups manage to expand their operations, build their teams, and raise the funds necessary to scale – a phenomenon called the “pioneer gap” (Lall, Bowles, & Baird,2013, p. 15) or the “valley of death” (Branscomb & Auerswald,2002, p. 36). Studies have identified multiple barriers to the growth of social start-ups: The issues they seek to solve are often systemic and wicked (Dorado & Ventresca,2013, p. 69); they work in resource-constrained environments and focus on vulnerable target groups, reducing their customer base (Pandey et al.,2017, p. 8). Social start-ups often lack access to markets and capital because of their reduced earning potential (Gianoncelli, Gaggiotti, Miguel, & Charro,2020, p. 27). In the face of these challenges, social start-ups benefit from stakeholders – multilateral agencies, governments, or foundations – that are resource-rich with the “potential to sponsor and support social entrepreneurship” (Pandey et al., 2017, p. 2). Consequently, new programs and institutions have emerged to support social entrepreneurs in growing their ventures, addressing the pioneer gap, and driving social change worldwide (Casasnovas & Bruno,2013;Lall et al., 2013;Miller & Stacey,2014;Yang, Kher, & Newbert,2020). 2.2. Incubators and Accelerators Among the entities supporting social start-ups in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, incubators and accelerators are the most prominent, according to a recent review of the support landscape for social entrepreneurship (Leirich,2020, p. 48). To review the multifaceted research that has accompanied the emergence of incubators and accelerators, this section focuses on three questions: What are incubators and accelerators? Is distinguishing between them critical? What do researchers know about those explicitly supporting social start-ups? 2.2.1. The Emergence of Incubators and Accelerators The establishment of the first incubator for technology start-ups, the Stanford Research Park, took place in 1959 in the United States (Galbraith, McAdam, & Cross,2019), and its first review was a 1985 study by Allen and Rahman. The number of incubators has increased to around 7,000 worldwide (Van Weele, van Rijnsoever, & Nauta,2017). Business incubators “have become an integral part of the modern entrepreneurial ecosystem” (J. P. Hausberg & Korreck,2021, p. 152). Their popularity has sparked a rich research stream, reviewed by Hackett and Dilts (2004) and more recently by Mian, Lamine, and Fayolle (2016) and J. P. Hausberg and Korreck (2021). A bibliometric analysis was conducted by Albort-Morant and Ribeiro-Soriano (2016). Incubators have evolved significantly since the 1950s. Mian et al. (2016) have described three waves of incubation models: Before 1980, science parks or technology gardens aimed at economic restructuring and job creation. The second wave in the 1980s and 1990s also offered value-adding services such as mentoring or networking. The third wave, since 2000, has seen the emergence of specialized incubators, innovation centers, and accelerators. Owing to this history, which aligns with the three generations of incubators described by Bruneel, Ratinho, Clarysse, and Groen (2012), older definitions often emphasize their physical collocation. Hackett and Dilts (2004, p. 55) called them “enterprises that facilitate the early-stage development of firms by providing office space, shared services and business assistance”. More recent definitions tend to reference their goals or behaviors, rather than their resources. J. P. Hausberg and Korreck (2021, p. 163) have reconciled these views by defining them as “organizations that support the establishment and growth of new businesses with tangible and intangible resources during a flexible period”. A newer but no less popular incubation model emerged as part of the third wave to support the rapid growth of startups: the accelerator. Y Combinator, widely considered the first accelerator for technology start-ups, launched in 2005 (www.ycombinator.com). Between 2009 and 2018, the number of accelerators grew fivefold from 560 to 2,616, according to research by Roland Berger (Bioulac, Ditsche, & Dujacquier,2019, p. 3). Hochberg (2016, p. 26) has provided a comparable estimate of over 3,000 accelerator programs worldwide. The rise of accelerators has prompted a wealth of research, reviewed by Colombo et al. (2018) and Crisan et al. (2019). The majority of these studies fall into two categories: conceptual descriptions or empirical studies on the impact on venture performance (Hochberg,2016). Although recent studies have indicated positive effects of accelerators on ventures (C. S. R. Chan et al.,2020;Hallen, Cohen, & Bingham,2020), there is still no consensus definition of accelerators, despite pioneering work by Cohen (2013) and Cohen and Hochberg (2014). Consequently, it is necessary to ask whether incubators and accelerators are conceptually different entities. 2.2.2. Incubators and Accelerators – Same or Distinct? Following the first definition of accelerators, or seed accelerators (Adkins,2011;Miller & Bound,2011), schol- N. Manhart /Junior Management Science 7(2) (2022) 289-337 293 ars have argued that they constitute a distinct organizational form from incubators (Pauwels, Clarysse, Wright, & Van Hove,2016). The most common definition of an accelerator, that by Cohen and Hochberg (2014, p. 4), lists five features in which it differs from an incubator and other models of entrepreneurial assistance, such as angel investors and coworking environments. An accelerator is defined as a “fixed-term, cohort-based program, including mentorship and educational components, that culminates in a public pitch event”. Although most scholars now regard accelerators as a “distinct form of innovation intermediary” (Crisan et al.,2019, p. 10), this study follows Mian et al. (2016) and Sansone, Andreotti, Colombelli, and Landoni (2020) in treating them as a form of incubator. This approach is justified on the following four grounds: First, both entities essentially pursue the same goal, namely to “support rapid growth and rapid scaling up of entrepreneurial ventures” (Pandey et al.,2017, p. 18). Second, the definition by Cohen and Hochberg is modeled narrowly on U.S. technology accelerators such as Y Combinator and TechStars. By contrast, accelerators working in the social enterprise space “tend to work across a fairly wide spectrum of enterprise development stages, perhaps reflecting the relatively limited pipeline of firms” (Lall et al.,2013, p. 115). Third, the distinction does not hold empirically. There is “significant heterogeneity even among groups that meet the formal definition” (Hochberg,2016, p. 35), with entities that could be defined as incubators referring to themselves as accelerators, and vice versa. This observation is exemplified by the research setting of this study, the Impact Factory, which does not fit into either of the two categories, as Table 3in Section 3.2 shows. The final and most compelling argument is that the predominant focus on the organizational form is a “constraint on advancements in [the]field,” that would “benefit by moving the focus of study to the level of the mechanism (i.e., acceleration)” (Shankar & Clausen, 2020, p. 102174). Likewise, Crisan et al. (2019, p. 20) have focused on mechanisms to “open the accelerator’s black box” and explain how accelerators “pursue different interventions in different contexts”. This discussion has two implications for this study. First, the study incorporates the framework of organizational sponsorship in its research design to shed light on accelerator mechanisms. Second, it does not distinguish between incubators and accelerators. Rather, it refers to them interchangeably, or as “entrepreneurial support programs,” to mean organizational entities aiming to support early-stage entrepreneurial ventures through the provision of resources or services. The current research on a particular type of accelerator – with the aim of supporting social start-ups – is presented in the following section. 2.2.3. The Acceleration of Social Start-Ups: What is Known As the number of incubators and accelerators has expanded, so have their specializations. These entities have emerged in various organizational contexts, such as governments, corporations, and universities. Lall et al. (2020, p. 3) have distinguished three subtypes of the accelerator model: seed, corporate, and impact-oriented. Among these, the acceleration of social start-ups has experienced particularly dynamic growth. According to a 2018 survey, 15% of incubators and accelerators in Europe primarily targeted social startups, and 42% partially targeted such start-ups (SIM,2020). The European Venture Philanthropy Association has counted 62 impact incubators and accelerators in Europe (Gianoncelli et al.,2020). TechStars, one of the most prominent accelerators in the world, has even announced a program for “forprofit, mission-driven founders building technologies to solve our most pressing social and environmental needs” (Shieber, 2017). Considering the popularity of impact-oriented incubators, there is a remarkable scarcity of academic studies on these entities – even though “social incubators” were mentioned for the first time over 15 years ago (Aernoudt,2004). Even in 2014, a study called social accelerators “quite rare” and “experimental” (Dempwolf, Auer, & D’Ippolito,2014, p. 25). The review by Crisan et al. (2019, p. 14) included one study (out of 81) about accelerators aiming to “support social entrepreneurship”, and the only review on social incubators to date is a working paper by J. Hausberg and Korreck (2017). The scholarly interest in this novel phenomenon has only grown in recent years. To categorize the extant literature on the incubation of social start-ups, one can use the three categories suggested by J. P. Hausberg and Korreck (2021) in their review of conventional business incubators. Most publications have provided “definitions and typologies,” including case studies (Nicolopoulou, Karata¸s-Özkan, Vas, & Nouman,2017; Sonne,2012), surveys (Casasnovas & Bruno,2013;King et al.,2015;Lall et al.,2013;Miller & Stacey,2014), and consultancy reports (Aspen Network,2014;SIM,2020). Studies on their “performance” have demonstrated that socialimpact-oriented accelerators also improve the revenues and funding of the incubated ventures (Lall et al.,2020;Roberts & Lall,2018) and that they are as efficient as other types of incubators (Sansone et al.,2020). By contrast, their “incubation process” remains largely unexplored – except for a study on the appeal of social accelerator benefits (Pandey et al.,2017) and one on social accelerator selection (Yang et al.,2020). This lack of research makes it difficult to answer an important question raised by (J. Hausberg & Korreck,2017, p. 13): If social businesses face different challenges, do they also require different support models? Recent empirical evidence has indicated that impact-oriented incubators and accelerators differ from their conventional counterparts. A study of incubators in Italy has suggested, for instance, that different types of incubators value different services: Business incubators considered physical spaces more important than social incubators, which in turn valued services linked to social impact (Sansone et al.,2020, p. 132). Similarly, a survey of incubators in Germany has found that 20% of all N. Manhart /Junior Management Science 7(2) (2022) 289-337294 incubators and 33% of social incubators offered specific services for ventures with significant social impact (SIM,2020, p. 51). However, both studies reflected the views of incubator managers, and not of start-ups. Moreover, they failed to explain causality. The same applies to a quantitative study by Pandey et al. (2017, p. 1), who conceded that “little is known about how social entrepreneurs – the primary intended beneficiaries – assess the value-proposition of social accelerators”. Based on the above findings, do incubators and accelerators supporting social start-ups need to tailor their services to these ventures? Or can they rely on best practices learned from the acceleration of conventional start-ups, as the support needs of social start-ups are comparable? To address these questions, this study uses the framework of organizational sponsorship. 2.3. Organizational Sponsorship One reason that this study does not differentiate between incubators and accelerators based on their form is that this factor indicates little about their functioning – and their effects. As Shankar and Clausen (2020, p. 2) have argued, “knowledge about the form (accelerator) is incomplete without knowledge about the mechanism (acceleration)”. Hence, multiple authors have called for a better understanding of the acceleration process (Colombo et al.,2018;Crisan et al., 2019). However, attempts to do so are complicated by the diversity and fragmentation of the entrepreneurial support landscape. The framework of organizational sponsorship helps to overcome this hurdle and structure the study of entrepreneurial support. Although this study does not rely on theory to develop and test hypotheses, employing a theoretical lens can still help with identifying and discussing relevant issues. Therefore, organizational sponsorship is introduced in three steps: by defining its original framework, by extending it to the acceleration of social start-ups, and by viewing incubators and accelerators as a type of organizational sponsor. 2.3.1. Original Framework Combining perspectives from population ecology and resource dependence, Flynn (1993b, p. 51) originally defined sponsorship as “the intervention by government agencies, business firms, and/or universities to create an environment conducive to the birth and survival of organizations”. Sponsors can strengthen nascent organizations by making resources available to them in their early stages, when they are most exposed to external liabilities (Stinchcombe,1965). Although Flynn (1993b, p. 51) already mentioned “university and private industry sponsored business incubators” as an example of sponsorship, his concept was popularized 20 years later by Amezcua et al. (2013, p. 1628), who defined organizational sponsorship as “attempts to mediate the relationship between new organizations and their environments by creating a resource-munificent context intended to increase survival rates among those organizations”. In their effort to “better understand why and how different attempts to assist new organizations might succeed or fail”, Amezcua et al. (2013, p. 1628) found that “resource munificence is not necessarily predictive of organizational survival”, as the effect of sponsorship is contingent on geographic-based founding density. Moreover, they argued that sponsorship influences the survival of new organizations through two mechanisms: buffering and bridging (p. 1629). Buffering helps new organizations engage in formational and developmental activities without being exposed to external threats. Sponsors can also function as a bridge between organizations and their environment, and thereby provide legitimacy and social capital to new ventures. Amezcua et al. (2013, p. 1633) considered business incubators an ideal setting to observe how providing resources, social connections, and management advice supports the creation and growth of new businesses. 2.3.2. Extended Framework In a recent literature review, Breivik-Meyer (2020, p. 174) called organizational sponsorship “an emerging theory that bridges the conversation between scholars of different types of sponsorship”. Although the framework is suitable for studying start-up acceleration, it has not been clearly defined yet. Pandey et al. (2017, p. 8) have argued, for example, that social accelerators also engage in “bolstering” mechanisms by offering “mentoring, opportunities for additional fundraising and adding to an early-stage social venture’s credibility and awareness”. However, it remains unclear how bolstering is conceptually different from building and bridging, as Breivik-Meyer (2020, p. 182) has noted. A recent study has proposed that business incubators engage in “curating” by selectively directing entrepreneurs to the best available provider of a given resource (Amezcua, Ratinho, Plummer, & Jayamohan,2020, p. 3). Yet, this mechanism also appears redundant to the two original mechanisms, in particular bridging. Autio and Rannikko (2016, p. 43) noted that the concept of sponsorship, “while informing survival, has paid less attention to new venture growth”. They argued that sponsorship is not only about passively insulating new ventures against market realities, but also about “boosting” their capacities to affect growth. Such policies may include “emphasizing strong growth motivations,” “controlling milestone achievement,” and “promoting the exchange of experiential insights”. Adding the boosting mechanism to building and bridging to study the acceleration of social start-ups leads to the framework presented in Table 1. Importantly, Table 1omits the activities and services associated with each sponsorship mechanism. These are specified in the services portfolio in the final part of this section. It is first necessary to summarize what is – and is not – known about incubators and accelerators as organizational sponsors. N. Manhart /Junior Management Science 7(2) (2022) 289-337 295 Table 1: The Extended Organizational Sponsorship Framework Mechanisms of Organizational Sponsorship Buffering Bridging Boosting Entrepreneurial resources Focus on the development of internal resources Focus on the acquisition of external resources Focus on boosting the organizational capacities for growth The role of sponsorship Maintaining a protective environment Serving as a connective intermediary Formation and achievement of milestones and serving as intermediary between firms The goal of sponsorship Developing internal resources while minimizing resource dependencies Acquiring social capital and legitimacy to build sustainable competitive advantage Affecting the capacity for growth Note. Adapted from Breivik-Meyer (2020). 2.3.3. Incubators and Accelerators as Organizational Sponsors Organizational sponsorship is still evolving as a theoretical perspective. Most contributions using this framework were published after 2016 (Breivik-Meyer,2020, p. 176). While these recent studies show promise for advancing the study of start-up incubation, “the actual content of those mechanisms is somewhat unclear and may differ across sponsorship phenomena” (Breivik-Meyer,2020, p. 185). A comparison of five intermediaries underlined the importance of different types of sponsors, suggesting that every support organization “leaves a fading yet indelible mark” on nascent entrepreneurial firms (Clayton, Feldman, & Lowe,2018, p. 117). Thus, this study focuses on sponsorship in the context of incubators and accelerators. Nevertheless, this process still requires further exploration. For example, a study on incubators in Norway has indicated that buffering and bridging can facilitate the development of new firms by increasing their resource access and capability development – but also that its quantitative research design provided “little explanation as to why tenant firms choose to use these services or why they do not” (Breivik-Meyer, Arntzen-Nordqvist, & Alsos,2019, p. 29). The provision of resources by organizational sponsors can even be counterproductive, as certain conditions can “inhibit or reverse the intended outcomes of organizational sponsorship” (Amezcua et al.,2020, p. 3). A study of U.S. accelerators has revealed that their design choices influence how new ventures process available information – they can help new firms overcome issues of bounded rationality by concentrating consultations, practicing disclosure, and standardizing activities (Cohen, Bingham, & Hallen,2019). Incubators also struggle to determine which services supported companies need, as nascent entrepreneurs are often unaware of their resource gaps (Van Weele et al.,2017). Therefore, the incubator–incubatee interaction is essential for the codevelopment of service offerings (Vanderstraeten, van Witteloostuijn, & Matthyssens,2020). Another factor is the identity of their sponsor: While government-sponsored incubators provide a combination of services, private, academic, and NGO-sponsored incubators tend to specialize in certain services (Dutt et al.,2016). In summary, the effectiveness of organizational sponsorship by incubators seems to depend on a multitude of factors, including their design, their funder, and their interaction with ventures. This study focuses on the process of supporting social start-ups, which in their early stage are often “devoid of markers of quality in the market, financial and social resources to generate growth, and sustained competitive advantages” (Amezcua et al.,2020, p. 3). Hence, this study assesses the resource needs of social start-ups – and how incubators and accelerators leverage the mechanisms of buffering, bridging, and boosting to support them. This study simultaneously considers the potential disadvantages of organizational sponsorship. Resource munificence can, for example, decrease survival rates among new organizations (Amezcua et al.,2013). It can prevent the early adaptation of new ventures (Cohen,2013) and adversely affect firm performance by hampering the incentivizing effects of market exchanges (Jourdan & Kivleniece,2017). Consequently, this study also asks whether – and why – social startups regard accelerator intervention as detrimental to their development. 2.4. Compiling an Exemplary Services Portfolio Reviewing the existing literature on incubators, accelerators, and organizational sponsorship has illustrated why scholars from these fields have called for more studies on the activities of incubators and accelerators. Particular areas of further interest are the relationships between incubatees and sponsors (J. P. Hausberg & Korreck,2021, p. 170), the services portfolio accelerators offer (Crisan et al.,2019, p. 2), and how these services contribute to the development of tenant firms (Breivik-Meyer et al.,2019, p. 7). These questions are especially relevant for social accelerators, as “no large sample studies” have examined their relationship with social entrepreneurs (Pandey et al.,2017, p. 1). Due to the lack of research on incubator and accelerator activities, it is difficult to draw on existing studies to compile an overview of their services portfolio. The following examples from widely cited studies on incubator activities demonstrate this challenge: In a review, Hackett and Dilts (2004) N. Manhart /Junior Management Science 7(2) (2022) 289-337296 mentioned “selection,” “monitoring and assistance,” and “resource infusion”, whereas Bergek and Norrman (2008) listed “selection,” “business support,” and “mediation” as the components of incubation. Additional examples include “mentorship,” “connectivity,” and “brand enhancement” (Wise & Valliere,2014), along with “business support,” “infrastructure,” “access to networks,” and “access to external resources, knowledge and legitimacy” (Bruneel et al.,2012). This cursory list brings two conceptual issues to light: the need to differentiate between activities and outcomes, and arbitrariness in the selection of categories (e.g., the vague term “business support”). To address the first point, this study follows Crisan et al. (2019, pp. 16), who distinguished among “interventions” (services and activities offered), “outcomes” (achievements in specific contexts or bundles of services), and “mechanisms” (processes that transform interventions into outcomes). This study uses the framework of organizational sponsorship to address the second point and systematically analyze what incubators and accelerators do. To apply this framework to the present research question, an intermediary step is required: identifying the most relevant services and activities of incubators and accelerators and matching them to the mechanisms of organizational sponsorship. To compile this exemplary services portfolio, this study reviewed 26 studies in three categories: 1) 10 on social incubators and accelerators, 2) seven on conventional incubators, and 3) nine on conventional accelerators. These studies were mostly peer-reviewed, although practitioner and research reports had to be additionally consulted for accelerators and social accelerators. The services or activities mentioned in these studies were subsequently grouped and assigned to the mechanisms of organizational sponsorship. Conceptually similar concepts were aggregated to identify the most prevalent services for each mechanism (see Appendix for the full results and the used sources). The resulting portfolio in Table 2contains nine services, ranked by the frequency of their mentions in each category: “education and training,” “internal mentoring,” “seed funding,” and “coworking space” for the buffering mechanism; “external networking,” “access to external funding,” and “validation and visibility” for bridging; and “peer support” and “milestones and progress tracking” for boosting. Importantly, the portfolio in Table 2is based on statistical considerations but also theoretical salience. Table 2indicates that services associated with the boosting mechanism were barely mentioned in the reviewed studies. However, the boosting mechanism was still included to assess the relevance for start-up acceleration as suggested by Autio and Rannikko (2016). Moreover, this exercise did not constitute a systematic literature review, and the statistical results should be interpreted with caution. Regardless, Table 2indicates the services that were mentioned most frequently in the reviewed literature, which helped to ensure that the most relevant services of incubators and accelerators were addressed in the interviews – in combination with open-ended questions to allow novel concepts to emerge. Such “a priori specification of constructs” can facilitate “the initial design of theorybuilding research” and “permits researchers to measure constructs more accurately” (Eisenhardt,1989, p. 536). Regardless of its statistical validity, Table 2offers interesting observations. There is, for example, consistency regarding the two most prominent services across the three categories (“education and training” and “external networking”), while funding services (“seed funding” and “access to funding”) have a mid-level to low ranking. There is simultaneous variation between the categories (e.g., the high prominence of “coworking” in incubator studies or “internal mentoring” in accelerator studies). The most relevant comparison is between social incubators and accelerators, on the one hand, and their conventional counterparts, on the other hand. Table 2suggests that their service offerings differ, for example, the higher prominence of the bridging mechanism for social incubation. Therefore, one primary question explored in this study is whether social start-ups expect social incubators and accelerators to offer support services tailored to their needs. 3. Research Design The previous section argued that recent research on incubators and accelerators has advanced the understanding of entrepreneurial support programs for nascent ventures. However, it also maintained that researchers have not sufficiently investigated the support for start-ups aiming to achieve societal or environmental goals. For this reason, this study utilizes the mechanisms of organizational sponsorship to study the acceleration of social start-ups. This research combines a study of multiple cases with an inductive research approach to generate additional insights. Following Eisenhardt (1989) roadmap for building theory from case study research, this section introduces the case study method, the research setting, the case selection, and the approach for the collection and analysis of the data. 3.1. Case Study Method A case study has been defined by Yin (2003, p. 13) as an “empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context, when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident”. It has a distinct advantage when three conditions are met: a causal research question (how, why), no control of behavioral events, and a focus on contemporary events. All these conditions hold in the case of the present research question. Using multiple cases, as opposed to a single case, typically provides a more potent base for theory building (Yin,2003, p. 33). It permits a replication logic in which multiple cases are considered experiments to replicate or contradict an initial set of propositions (Yin,2003, p. 47). Multiple cases are a “bridge from rich qualitative evidence to mainstream deductive research” (Eisenhardt & Graebner,2007, p. 25) and allow to look for generalizability of constructs across cases, helping to detect rational or causal patterns (Dooley,2002, p. 342). N. Manhart /Junior Management Science 7(2) (2022) 289-337 303 Table 7: Social-Mission Focus Educational background Professional experience Manifestations of the social-mission focus Representative quotes Start-ups of the fellows program F1 Mathematics and Computer Science, PhD Research, 4 years 1. Hybridity People are not packages. We have to consider more than pure business efficiency. At the same time, business efficiency plays a major role. There is no other way. (I) 2. Sustainability I believe those who work sustainably have universally higher success rates. But I don’t really see a need to do anything different than what a normal start-up does. (I) F2 Business Administration Pharmaceuticals, 10 years 3. Independence If I would even think about working with a business angel or with an external investor, then only if the social impact component is safeguarded. (I) 4. Priority of purpose I have experienced corporate life for too long. I have always said I don’t want to discuss purchase prices with an investor. Those are the cornerstones of our business, and I can’t touch them. (I) 2. Sustainability We set a high standard of socially and ecologically sustainable cooperation. We source natural materials and work directly with our producers to protect their traditions. (W) F3 Information Management IT consulting, <1 year Co-founder: Solar energy, 8 years 5. Long-time thinking Investors are exit-driven. It is about growing quickly and then selling. We are looking for somebody who wants to give patient capital and share in the profits. Not just put money in and bang, away with it. (I) 6. Credible impact We want to include impact KPIs in our balanced scorecard, in our monitoring. We haven’t done that yet, but as soon as this loan is safe, it will be on the list. (I) 2. Sustainability We develop products with a positive carbon footprint that are fun, durable, locally produced, and repaired and recycled locally. (P) F4 Tropical Biology, PhD Researcher / Founder of a consultancy, >15 years 3. Independence The vast majority of start-ups are looking for money. We have been asked time and again by investors whether they could join us. And we have always refused. (I) 4. Priority of purpose Our aim is not to achieve the fastest and largest possible monetary profit, but to make a good business for everyone in the true sense of the word...(W) 6. Credible impact From cultivation to the finished product, we are directly involved and can influence all production steps. Our internal rules exceed the criteria of any certification. (W) 2. Sustainability The start-up scene is dominated by people who think they have a really cool idea and need 1.5 million. Often it’s just hot air with a fancy website. To be honest, that’s a bit strange to us. (I) F5 Education Co-founder: IT, MBA Education, >25 years Co-founder: IT (C Level), >20 years 4. Priority of purpose You can present what we do as a company one way or another. It would be easy to get financing. This is really a good story. But we didn’t want to play this card at all. No, actually we are a purpose company. (I) 6. Credible impact With social start-ups, you have to have [impact measurement], that’s your legitimation for saying I really want to achieve outcome and impact. And I am quite rigorous. You have to be serious about that. (I) (Continued) N. Manhart /Junior Management Science 7(2) (2022) 289-337304 Table 7—continued Start-ups of the ramp-up program R1 Business Administration Logistics (C Level), >20 years 3. Independence I don’t want to have to give account to somebody and pay eight percent interest. You need investors who actually think about this solution and are convinced of it and who don’t really care about the money. (I) 4. Priority of purpose We simply lack a profit motive. When I go to the bank, they say: what do you want here with us. I have built up this organization with 60, 70 hours a week for three years completely free of charge. (I) 5. Long-time thinking I could open a platform and create a sort of Tinder. The expenditure is not much. But that doesn’t solve the problem. I don’t want to charge 35 euros per hour to look after a poor mother, it has to be cheap. (I) R2 Management Food and drink (C Level) >15 years 3. Independence I don’t want to depend on external people. If I don’t know them or their intentions, then that is too risky for me. But if you spend a little money, it goes faster and in the end, it may be more efficient. (I) 4. Priority of purpose A start-up can only be successful if it exists on the market for a long time and fulfills a real purpose. To make money quickly, you need a short-term focus, which I used to hate in normal business life. (I) 5. Long-time thinking I have problems with short-termism. And that’s why I’m in the impact business and not in the classic money-making business. It’s about the purpose and not about the money. (I) R3 Business Informatics Banking 9 years 1. Hybridity We use profits and growth to do this as a means to social and environmental goals. This social cashback creates the positive impact we need as a society. We put purpose before profit maximization. (W) 4. Priority of purpose It is quite clear the profit will never be the main focus for us. We have built the company completely differently. We have committed our company to reinvesting all profits and donating the rest. (I) R4 Marketing and Sales Digital Marketing 10 years 2. Sustainability Sustainability is the most important thing for us and the reason we founded the company. We want to look at ourselves and say: we made a big contribution to climate protection and against plastic flood. (M) 1. Hybridity For us sustainability also includes the economic aspect. Therefore, we were looking for a solution where purpose and profit are "streamlined", i.e. the more sustainable impact, the more revenue we generate. (P) 6. Credible impact No matter if you talk about profit or not, you always need take your impact into account. Personally, I would say that no start-up or company today would be harmed by taking this topic seriously. (I) R5 International Business None (University) <1 year 3. Independence We didn’t want to take the classic start-up path of directly taking up an investment and getting an investor in who is not 100 percent committed to our development and the impact idea. (I) 4. Priority of purpose When we decided to found this company, we said to ourselves: Okay, the impact must always come first. If that means that we can’t pay out a cent for the first two or three years, then that’s perfectly fine. (I) Note.The personal information refers to the main interviewee. Co-founders have been mentioned when their profile differs materially from the interviewee. Sources: (I)nterview with the author; (M)edia articles; (P)itch decks or (P)resentations; (W)ebsite. All German quotes translated by the author. N. Manhart /Junior Management Science 7(2) (2022) 289-337 305 Figure 1: Analytical Model for the Acceleration of Social Start-Ups Finally, Table 7signals no clear difference in social-mission focus between ramp-ups and fellows, which suggests that the advanced stage of fellows had not led to mission drift. To explore the social-mission focus further, the founders were asked why they started their ventures in the first place. Table 8groups their founding motivations into four common themes. In their study of social entrepreneurship motivations, Germak and Robinson (2014, p. 18) found “a unique blend of motivational components in nascent social entrepreneurs”. Table 8confirms that a combination of four factors motivated the founders in this study. Achieving societal impact seemed to be a prime motivation, with nine founders explicitly mentioning their impact on direct or indirect beneficiaries, and six aiming to achieve a systemic impact. This is not entirely surprising – in a poll 97% of German social entrepreneurs expressed a desire to solve societal challenges, and only 3% a desire to “become rich” (DSEM,2020, p. 55). The same survey, in line with Table 8, indicated that seeking personal fulfillment is a strong motivator for social entrepreneurs. Germak and Robinson (2014, p. 13) also found that the needs of social entrepreneurs are “at a higher level of personal fulfillment” than seen with “necessity-based” entrepreneurs. Observing this factor more closely, the primary sources of personal fulfillment in this study were seizing opportunities, tackling complexity, and achieving autonomy, whereas no founder talked about material gains. Nonetheless, accomplishing significant achievement is also a strong motivator for social entrepreneurs, “not entirely dissimilar from what one would expect of commercial entrepreneurs” (Germak & Robinson,2014, p. 16). In the case of the start-ups in this study, this desire focused on developing innovative solutions through innovative technologies and business practices but also by drawing on experiences from other sectors or countries – reflecting their maturity and diverse professional experiences. A fourth motivational factor cited in the literature is personal closeness to a social problem (Germak & Robinson, 2014, p. 17). Katre and Salipante (2012, p. 977) even found that starting with an “initial concept of social change based on personal, family, or community experiences” and then developing an economic opportunity distinguished successful from struggling social entrepreneurs. Accordingly, half the founders reported being personally affected by a societal issue. More surprising is another source of personal closeness: Six out of 10 explicitly cited traveling or working abroad as a personal motivation for founding their venture. In combination, the findings of Table 7and Table 8confirm Nicholls (2006, p. 13) definition that social start-ups are characterized by a “prime strategic focus on social impact” and an innovative and entrepreneurial approach to achieving it. For the start-ups in this study, the primary social purpose “is not a difference in net profits, but a net difference in total value creation” (Wilson & Post,2013, p. 723) – regardless of their development stage. Having established their motiva- N. Manhart /Junior Management Science 7(2) (2022) 289-337306 Table 8: Founding Motivations Second order codes First order codes Representative quotes All mentions Developing innovative solutions new research It appeared on my desk and I thought how wonderful, because my dissertation was on this area. (I) (F1) F1, F4 R3 new technology You have to combine pedagogical thinking and sophisticated technical skills and make it operational. (I) (F5) F1, F3, F5 new business practices The core of our innovation is that we have developed a valid procedure to measure digital skills. (I) (F5) F5 R3, R4 business experience I decided to bring 20 years of logistics expertise and digitization into the social sphere. (I) (R1) F4, F5 R1, R2 replication We first tried our approach in Cambodia, and step by step we added more and more countries. (M) (R5) R2, R5 Seeking personal fulfillment meaningful work The decisive factor for me was that I was looking for more meaning. (I) (R2) F2 R2 achieving autonomy It started as a student organization and we decided to spin it off as an impact start-up. (I) (R5) R3, R4, R5 having fun It is very time-consuming, especially because none of us earns anything from it, but it is simply fun. (M) (R5) R5 tackling complexity Mathematical algorithms are incredibly diverse and adaptable. This is what excites me about them. (M) (F1) F1, F4, F5 R1 seizing opportunities There was a call for tender by the EU to operationalize this, but they couldn’t find anyone to do it. (I) (F5) F1, F5 R4 Achieving social impact on direct beneficiaries I don’t want to charge 35 euros per hour to look after a poor mother, it has to be cheap. (I) (R1) F1, F2, F3, F4, F5 R1, R2 on indirect beneficiaries There are many NGOs/NPOs which lack the necessary capital to keep their engines running. (W) (R3) R3, R5 on economic stakeholders You as a consumer or as a a restaurant owner can make a personal contribution to environmental relief. (W) (R4) F2, F4, F5 R2, R3, R4 for everyone Our vision is to create a social and environmental impact for millions of people and our planet. (P) (F3) F1, F3 R1, R3, R4, R5 Personal closeness from being affected Nursing care and especially the current nursing emergency affect us all, sooner or later. (W) (F1) F1, F2 R1, R2, R4 from working abroad We discovered our passion for solar energy and African culture during two years on the ground. (P) (F3) F2, F3, F4 from travelling After six months of travelling and searching through Southeast Asia, we opened our online store. (M) (F2) F2, F3 R2, R3, R4, R5 Sources: (I)nterview with the author; (M)edia articles; (P)itch decks or (P)resentations; (W)ebsite of the start-up. All German quotes translated by the author. tional drivers, the following section explores which resources social start-ups require to pursue a double bottom line – and how incubators and accelerators can best support them. 4.2. Resource Needs One way to conceptualize the relationship between incubators and social start-ups is the resource-based view of the firm (RBV). This theory is used “to investigate how the deployment of key resources,” such as business and social support, “changes during the lifecycle development of the small entrepreneurial firm” (McAdam & McAdam,2008, p. 278). According to the RBV, organizations require unique resources and capabilities, both tangible and intangible, to create a sustained competitive advantage (Barney,1991;Grant,1991; Wernerfelt,1984). Strategic resources are defined as basic inputs owned or controlled by the firm that are valuable, rare, hard to imitate, and difficult to substitute (Barney,1991, pp. 105-106), while capabilities involve “complex patterns of coordination between people and between people and other resources” (Grant,1991, p. 122). When it comes to acquiring resources, the entrepreneurship literature has primarily focused on the ability of firms to leverage them internally (Dacin et al.,2010, p. 48). However, young organizations facing the liabilities of N. Manhart /Junior Management Science 7(2) (2022) 289-337 307 newness (Stinchcombe,1965) and smallness (Aldrich,1986) find it difficult to control and expand their internal resource base. The RBV suggests that creating a resource-rich environment can address these liabilities. Incubators, for example, can support start-ups by providing a flow of tangible and intangible resources (Carayannis & Von Zedtwitz, 2005;McAdam & McAdam,2008;Rothaermel & Thursby, 2005). The literature on sponsorship describes this process as deliberately increasing the level of resources available to new firms (Flynn,1993b, p. 57) and mediating the relationship between resources and their founding environment (Amezcua et al.,2013, p. 1632). Yet, studies have also shown that the provision of resources is not a unilateral process. Placing resources at the disposal of start-ups is not sufficient to support their growth. Cultural incompatibility or difficulty to absorb intangible resources can complicate resource acquisition (Becker & Gassmann,2006). Rice (2002) called the process of business assistance in incubators a coproduction, whereas Van Weele et al. (2017) found that entrepreneurs fail to take full advantage of incubator resources when they are unaware of resource gaps. In short, it makes sense to explore how social start-ups define their resource needs before exploring the support mechanisms. To do this in a structured way, this study used the classification by Van Weele et al. (2017, p. 19), who distinguish between two tangible resources (“physical and financial capital”) and three intangible ones (“knowledge,” “social capital,” and “legitimacy”). Based on the interview results, the classification was adapted by adding “training” to the “knowledge” category, as well as “personal support” as an intangible resource to include coaching and critical sparring. “Legitimacy,” which was not mentioned in the interviews, was dropped as a second-order code. Two further explanations regarding Table 9: First, the interview question specifically addressed the support expected by an incubator (see Appendix B), not the overall resource needs of a start-up. Second, only ramp-ups were asked how their resource needs changed after the end of the program since fellows enjoyed a fluid relation to the accelerator with no definite end date. To lay the foundation for the detailed assessment of sponsorship mechanisms in the following section, four aspects of Table 9are discussed: within-group commonalities, reliability, longitudinal variation, and receptiveness to external support. The first aspect are the shared characteristics of the startups in this study, which presumably affected their resource needs: a for-profit legal form, a social mission combined with commercial activities, and in most cases an experienced founding team with a business background. Hence, it was of interest to examine how the resource needs expressed in Table 9compared to the wider start-up population. In fact, the two intangible resources most frequently mentioned in Table 9– “knowledge and training” and “social capital” – are also often mentioned in studies on start-up resource needs: Van Weele et al. (2017) have found that business knowledge is one of the most significant resources provided by an incubator. Similarly, relational assets, or “social capital,” are highly relevant resources for social ventures (Dacin et al., 2010;Mair & Marti,2006). Within the “knowledge” category in Table 9, the resource needs were heterogeneous, except “marketing and sales” with six mentions. This was not surprising: Three-quarters of accelerator companies claim that “not understanding their target market” and “difficulties reaching their customers” are the greatest obstacles for a new venture, next to funding (Radojevich-Kelley & Hoffman,2012, p. 64). Surprisingly, the founders mentioned “financial capital” and “physical capital” less frequently. By contrast, German social entrepreneurs named funding as a key resource constraint in a recent survey (DSEM,2020, p. 65), just as other studies have identified accessing tangible resources as the most important reason for joining an incubator (McAdam & McAdam,2008;Van Weele et al.,2017). Rather than indicating overall resource needs, it appears that Table 9signals the resources expected from a support program. Furthermore, this result may reflect a broader trend in the incubator landscape, given that their value proposition is shifting from tangible resources to networks, knowledge, and legitimacy (Bruneel et al.,2012). The discrepancies between Table 9and other studies lead to a second aspect: How reliable are the views of founders in determining the value of support mechanisms? Start-ups sometimes struggle to determine their resource needs, which can reduce the effectiveness of incubator programs. They are “hesitant to step out of their comfort zone” (Van Weele et al., 2017, p. 26) and tend to experience problems of bounded rationality, such as incomplete and inaccurate information, while their decision making can be affected by cognitive biases (Cohen, Bingham, & Hallen,2019). These factors may explain why the resource needs articulated in Table 9diverged from the assessment of incubator and accelerator services presented subsequently in Section 4.3.1. Third, there was longitudinal variation between the resource needs expressed by the ramp-ups after the formal program (except for R1, who decided not to pursue the venture he entered the program with) compared to their responses at the start. Tables 9 indicates a need for more specialized support as start-ups mature, for example regarding international expansion (R4) or employment laws (R5). Similarly, R2 and R3 expressed a desire for more targeted networking. These responses suggest a change in resource needs over the duration of the program (five months) – a finding echoed by Casasnovas and Bruno (2013) and Drori and Wright (2018), who have noted that support needs of social start-ups progress with their stage of development. The final aspect is the relation between the resource needs of social start-ups and their receptiveness to external support. In theory, the combination of resource constraints and the complexity required to pursue a social and economic mission in parallel should make the founders of social startups “likely to be receptive to assistance from external parties such as social accelerators” (Pandey et al.,2017, p. 8). But although ramp-ups and fellows displayed similar resource N. Manhart /Junior Management Science 7(2) (2022) 289-337308 Table 9: Resource Needs Second order code First order code Representative quotes All mentions At the beginning of the program Knowledge and training business model We hoped to receive constructive feedback on our business model. (F1) F1 R3, R5 founding What all three of us haven’t done yet is to set up our own company. R4 legal issues (setting up) For us there were many questions at the time, such as corporate law issues and which legal form to choose. (R5) F4 R3, R5 marketing and sales We looked at a different market when we went into the Impact Factory, but we validated the market and came to a pivot. (R3) F1, F3, F4 R1, R3, R5 operations We plan to develop cloud services in the sales and aftersales area. F3 product We want an app to make our service more user-friendly. (R3) R3, R5 strategy We hope for new ideas for the strategic direction of our start-up. F4 Personal support coaching We hope that coaching will give us valuable advice. (R5) F3 R4, R5 critical sparring I am often on my own. I need sparring partners, I need people who make me want to get better. (R2) F2, F5 R2, R3 Social capital networking The biggest need at the beginning was actually to find contacts, contacts and contacts. (F1) F1, F2, F3, F5 R1, R2, R4 partnerships The establishment of sustainable partnerships of mutual benefit is desirable for us, especially from a sales perspective. (F3) F2, F3, F4 R1, R5 peer exchange We would like to use the Impact Factory ecosystem to meet like-minded people and learn from the experiences of others. (F5) F2, F3 R3, R5 Financial capital seed financing The number one topic is financing. How do I get in touch with investors? Door-knocking won’t be sufficient. (F3) F1, F3 R1, R3 Physical capital office space We need places to work. F1 At the end of the program (ramp-ups only) Knowledge and training international expansion We need an accelerator that is active in various markets, because our entire business model is built on expanding relatively quickly. R4 industry updates I would be interested in being kept up to date, more than in a larger program in which perhaps a third of the content is duplicated. (R2) R2, R3, R4 legal issues (tax, labor) We face new issues such as tax law or labor law. You just develop further and these matters become more pressing. R5 Social capital targeted networking Today the network is much more important to us, but we also know how to get intros ourselves or get in touch with other founders. (R3) R2, R3 Financial capital growth financing We also know that growth capital plays an important role in our platform model. (R4) R3, R4, R5 Note. All quotes are taken from the interviews and translated from German by the author. Second order codes adapted from Van Weele et al. (2017). needs, the first group decided to join a formal program, whereas the second chose an affiliation that provided them with a fraction of incubator benefits. The observation that some start-ups opt for an entrepreneurial support program (or multiple ones), while others with comparable resource needs prefer to go it alone, N. Manhart /Junior Management Science 7(2) (2022) 289-337 309 is further underlined by Table 10, which shows no clear pattern even within the two subgroups. Among the different factors affecting a start-up’s decision to join an incubator, such as venture stage, mission fit, selection policies, services provided, and the partner network (Chmiliar,2010), this study focused on one aspect in particular – the services provided. Consequently, the upcoming section explores how the mechanisms of sponsorship address the resource needs of social start-ups shown in Table 9. The trade-off between organizational sponsorship and entrepreneurial self-reliance is examined subsequently in Section 4.4. 4.3. Organizational Sponsorship Mechanisms As illustrated in the analytical model for the acceleration of social start-ups (Figure 1in Section 3.5), this study first presented the social-mission focus and founding motivations of 10 social start-ups. It then explored the resource needs required to pursue their social missions and concurrent economic activities. The following section now discusses how incubators and accelerators address the resource needs of social start-ups. In addition to the three mechanisms of organizational sponsorship and their underlying interventions, this study suggests that a fourth mechanism, impact acceleration, is particularly relevant to social start-ups. Before studying the individual mechanisms, this section explores how social startups rank the benefits of incubator support services. 4.3.1. Ranking of Sponsorship Interventions This study aims to create a better understanding of incubator and accelerator interventions, in particular from the perspective of social start-ups. Therefore, it compiled an exemplary services portfolio based on studies of conventional incubators and accelerators and their social counterparts (Table 2in Section 2.4; see Appendix for the full table). The resulting list of nine services was used in the interviews to discuss the activities of incubators and accelerators. The bulk of the interviews used open-ended questions to explore how specific services were perceived. Yet, the founders were also asked to rank the services according to their overall importance for social start-ups. Due to the small size of the sample and its selection based on theoretical considerations, the purpose of this exercise was not to provide a quantitative assessment of sponsorship services. Rather, the aim was to highlight how the founders in this sample perceived and prioritized them. As Table 11 reveals, the resulting ranking looked surprisingly similar for both subgroups. “Access to external networks” was rated as the most valuable service by ramp-ups and fellows alike. “Internal mentoring” and “peer networking” were also ranked highly across the sample, whereas “milestones and progress tracking” ended in the bottom ranks. In accordance with the resource needs expressed in Table 9, the three services related to tangible resources – “access to external funding,” “coworking space,” and “seed funding” –, scored lower than the ones providing intangible resources. The largest discrepancy between the two subgroups was observed for “validation and visibility,” which ranked second for fellows and last for ramp-ups. By contrast, ramp-ups attributed greater value to “education and training” than fellows. In their assessment of these two services, the two subgroups reflected the different priorities and contents of the ramp-up and fellows programs of the Impact Factory. Regarding the mechanisms of organizational sponsorship, Table 11 suggests a slight preference of fellows for the bridging mechanism, with two outward-facing interventions in the top three. Ramp-ups, perhaps owing to their reduced internal resource base, rated the buffering mechanism slightly higher. Overall, the mechanisms look evenly distributed. The most striking result concerns the provision of tangible and intangible resources. Comparing the results in Table 11 to the extant literature is challenging for three reasons already mentioned in Section 2: Studies on incubators and accelerators usually focus on their definitions and effects, and only rarely on their activities. If they do, they often take the perspective of incubator managers, and not of start-ups. Moreover, there have been few attempts to generalize the activities of incubation and acceleration beyond individual case studies. Studies that do attempt to study incubator services usually employ a rough classification, as three widely cited articles demonstrate: A study on the effect of accelerator services on venture performance compared “basic services of funding and coworking space” with “entrepreneurial schooling” (Gonzalez-Uribe & Leatherbee,2018). Research by Bruneel et al. (2012) showed that the usage of “business support” increased in recent incubator generations, while Bergek and Norrman (2008) distinguished between “strong intervention” and a “laissez-faire regime”. The broadness of these terms reflects the empirical diversity of incubators and accelerators. The review by Crisan et al. (2019, p. 12) counted 45 “typical interventions” and 36 “extended interventions,” the latter referring to “additional services based on participants’ needs”. These interventions were aggregated into five outcomes (p. 13): “Funding” was mentioned most frequently (in 52% of the reviewed studies), followed by “validation” (40%), “product development” (37%), “network” (33%), and “knowledge” (32%). While these figures refer to prevalence, and not to their value for start-ups, it is interesting that the literature mentions tangible resources such as “funding” more frequently than the respondents in this study. In contrast, Crisan et al. confirmed the importance of “networking,” which the respondents ranked as the most valuable service – in line with a study of five U.S. accelerators that cited “networking” as their most significant benefit (Radojevich-Kelley & Hoffman,2012). A study of 88 Italian incubators also found that “networking,” with “managerial support” and “physical spaces,” was among the most important incubator and accelerator services (Sansone et al., 2020). Another relevant data set confirmed the importance of networking: The application data of 23,368 early-stage ventures suggested that entrepreneurs placed the highest N. Manhart /Junior Management Science 7(2) (2022) 289-337310 Table 10: Experience with Additional Support Programs Ramp-ups Program(s) Fellows Program(s) R1 None F1 Fraunhofer accelerator; two technology accelerators; EU incubator with IT focus R2 Food-specific accelerator F2 None R3 Technology accelerator F3 Start-up competitions; university start-up program; regional founders network R4 None F4 Early support by a start-up center, but no formal program R5 Start-up competitions; university start-up program; two accelerators F5 None Note. The results refer to support programs prior or in parallel to the Impact Factory. Table 11: Ranking of Sponsorship Interventions Rank 1 2 2 4 4 6 7 8 9 Intervention Access to external networks Validation and visibility Internal mentoring Peer networking Education and training Access to external funding Co-working space Milestones and progress tracking Seed funding Start-ups of the fellows program F1 1 4 3 5 2 8 7 9 6 F2 2 5 4 1 3 7 8 6 9 F3 1 6 4 7 5 2 3 9 8 F4 2 1 3 4 5 9 8 6 7 F5 1 2 4 3 5 8 9 6 7 Ø 1.4 3.6 3.6 4 4 6.8 7 7.2 7.4 Mechanism Bridging Bridging Buffering Boosting Buffering Bridging Buffering Boosting Buffering Rank 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Intervention Access to external networks Education and training Internal mentoring Peer networking Access to external funding Seed funding Co-working space Milestones and progress tracking Validation and visibility Start-ups of the ramp-up program R1 3 4 2 6 1 n/a n/a 7 5 R2 1 2 3 4 6 8 7 5 9 R3 1 2 3 5 4 8 7 9 6 R4 2 4 6 1 5 3 8 7 9 R5 1 4 3 2 7 6 5 8 9 Ø 1.6 3.2 3.4 3.6 4.6 6.25 6.75 7.2 7.6 Mechanism Bridging Buffering Buffering Boosting Bridging Buffering Buffering Boosting Bridging Note. After the interview, founders were asked to rank nine interventions from 1 (most relevant for social start-ups) to 9 (least relevant for social start-ups). R1 decided not to rate two interventions (given as n/a). priority on building external relationships, including “connections to funders” and “mentorship” (Global Accelerator Learning Initiative,2020). The data set by GALI also indicated that “awareness and credibility” and “access to likeminded entrepreneurs” ranked lowest among potential benefits – unlike the views expressed in this study, especially by fellows. A similar discrepancy to Table 11 could be observed in a survey of 14 European impact-oriented incubators: “Revenue strategy,” “financial management,” and “fundraising” were considered the most important types of support after “strategic support” (Gianoncelli et al.,2020). Finally, a survey of 52 impact-focused accelerators found that the three most significant accelerator benefits were “mentorship,” “access to potential investors,” and “network” (Lall et al.,2013, p. 118). Summing up these results, the following trends emerge: N. Manhart /Junior Management Science 7(2) (2022) 289-337 311 “Networking” and “mentoring” were consistently ranked among the most important services in this study – and in the wider literature. The picture was less clear for “education and training” and “peer networking,” which ranked higher in Table 11 compared to other surveys. However, the largest discrepancy was registered in relation to the provision of tangible resources such as “funding” and “coworking.” These activities scored surprisingly low in Table 11, despite their prominence in the literature. 4.3.2. Buffering Mechanism The framework of organizational sponsorship defines the buffering mechanism as the provision of external resources to young organizations that are “understood to lack control over vital resources” (Amezcua et al.,2013, p. 1632). Incubators and accelerators help new organizations build internal resources until they can mobilize them from their environment (Amezcua et al.,2013, p. 1632). The buffering mechanism originally focused on material support, such as office space or consulting services (Breivik-Meyer et al.,2019, p. 8). This study extended the mechanism to include “mentoring,” in addition to three services typically used to increase the internal resource base of start-ups: “education and training,” “seed funding,” and “coworking space.” The following section explores how the founders assessed the value of these four services. Education and Training. The provision of education and training is one of the most prevalent activities of incubators and accelerators. In contrast to mentoring, this activity aims to impart knowledge and skills to start-ups. It can be offered internally, with the help of external experts, and through various formats such as workshops, lectures, and individual training. It can cover various topics, from business skills to legal, operational, and financial issues, either with a standardized curriculum or tailored to the needs of founders. In the exemplary services portfolio compiled for this study, 25 of 26 studies mentioned activities related to education and training (see Appendix). Moreover, the start-ups in this study mentioned knowledge and training as the most relevant resource need (Table 9in Section 4.2). Yet, despite this prominence, they did not consider education and training the most important service provided by incubators, as Table 11 shows: Ramp-ups ranked this service in second place, below the access to external networks. Fellows placed it fourth, on the same level as peer networking – not entirely surprising, given their more advanced development stage. Studying the resource needs in Table 9leads to two interesting observations regarding education and training: First, the knowledge interests of social start-ups were rather broad, with most topics mentioned only by one or two start-ups. Second, their education needs evolved as the start-ups advanced in their development. How can incubators and accelerators succeed in providing an education and training program that fulfills these diverse requirements? To answer this question, Table 12 divides the responses of the social start-ups into four categories: what (the desired content), how (the preferred methods), why (the added value), and why not (the limitations). Although all founders were asked about this activity, the latter two categories relied primarily on the views of ramp-ups who, unlike fellows, participated in the formal education program of the Impact Factory. The topic that was mentioned least frequently was the content of education and training – presumably because the founders had already addressed their knowledge gaps in terms of their resource needs (Table 9). However, half the respondents mentioned one specific area: providing legal advice. Multiple founders said that choosing the legal form is a major decision for a social start-up that can incorporate as a foror nonprofit entity. Two start-ups (R2 and R3) even changed their legal structure to a “purpose company” on the advice of the Impact Factory. There was mostly consensus regarding the preferred method of learning in an incubator or accelerator. First, four founders said that the education program needed to be tailored to their specific needs. Second, the education program should be practice-oriented, so replicating or even solving genuine business challenges. Third, outside experts should be included in the education offering. Apart from that, the founders expressed no strong views on whether the education should be provided individually or in groups. How can an incubator or accelerator then add value through its education and training program? According to the respondents, three activities are key: structuring and speeding up learning processes, solving concrete business challenges, and relating theoretical knowledge, such as accounting practices or financial planning, to the realities of running a start-up. Furthermore, an incubator should ensure that the knowledge it provides represents the state of the art, which even experienced founders such as R1 regarded as helpful. Simultaneously, all five ramp-ups mentioned limitations. Education and training activities can be useless, if not detrimental, when they are too basic, generic, or theoretical – a logical reversion of the learning preferences expressed in Table 12. They also repeatedly mentioned the time invested as a crucial factor in deciding whether education and training were beneficial. Summing up these results, three aspects are noteworthy. First, the founders considered education and training helpful overall – in line with the finding that entrepreneurship schooling leads to “significantly higher new venture performance” of accelerator companies (Gonzalez-Uribe & Leatherbee,2018, p. 1595). Second, human capital – skills, knowledge, and experience – play a key role in how founders appreciate training benefits, as Pandey et al. (2017) have previously shown. In this study, the founders were mostly experienced, with a strong background in business but limited prior knowledge of starting a social-mission venture. Hence, their training needs primarily centered on catalyzing internal learning processes, rather than on receiving business education. Third, these results reflected the views of founders who might have suffered from biases and bounded rationality. For example, it has been found that tailoring accelerator activi- N. Manhart /Junior Management Science 7(2) (2022) 289-337312 Table 12: Buffering 1 - Education and Training Second order code First order code Representative quotes All mentions What: content ecommerce It would have been easier if we had someone to explain to us at the beginning how a webshop works and what the best system is that still works as you grow. (F4) F2, F4 business plans When you start, you go in with a business plan. But the reality is completely different from what you planned. (R2) R2 legal advice Legal is always a big issue. You cannot just read up on it yourself. You don’t want to build on a fragile foundation. (R5) F1, F5 R2, R4, R5 How: methods customized Very basic workshops are no longer relevant for us. It’s definitely good to have a broad spectrum. The teams are diverse and depending on your needs, you should be able to pick and choose what you need. (F3) F1, F3 R2, R5 individual Exchange is important, but sometimes it adds more value if you really have a specific 1-to-1 conversation. R5 collective It’s about doing it directly in dialogue with others, in exchange, in group work. (F1) F1, F4 with outside expertise The people who led these workshops were really committed and available afterwards. That is really positive. As a start-up, you can’t always pay a professional. (R1) F2, F3, F4 R1 practical This is an incubator where you are given a very specific task, which is like building up a new business model. (F1) F1 R3, R5 Why: added value learning catalyst We noticed relatively quickly we had already dealt with all these topics in the past, but the Impact Factory gave us templates of practical use and we were able to organize our thoughts better and improve our processes. (R4) F2 R4 problem solver If you’re a founder, the only thing you’re looking for are problem solvers for topics that are relevant for you. And if you have one, don’t let them go. (R2) R2, R3, R4 reality check I believe that you can learn many basics like accounting on your own if you want to learn that. But to get your product, your offer, your service across to someone else - you don’t learn that from a book or an online course. (F1) F1 R1, R2 topicality I studied business administration, but that was a while ago. There are some things that were done differently in the past. And in the Impact Factory they offer workshops that bring you up to date on the latest developments. R1 Why not: limitations too basic The workshops don’t always help us one hundred percent because we have already seen a lot. Especially when you do a more general workshop, for example on marketing: we’ve heard that eight or ten times now. (R5) F5 R3, R4, R5 too generic A standard program, where I already know half of it, is a waste of time for me, which I don’t have. Flexibility is extremely important. (R2) R2, R3, R5 too theoretical Of course, we can always get more information. But everything to build up the company, we have to do ourselves. (R3) R1, R3 too time-consuming Maybe these things were offered, but because we are always so busy, maybe they simply slipped through. (F4) F4 R2 Note. All quotes are taken from the interviews and translated from German by the author. N. Manhart /Junior Management Science 7(2) (2022) 289-337 319 Table 18: Bridging 2 – Validation and Visibility Second order code First order code Representative quotes and further mentions Providing validation Validation: positive views association effect We really want to show that we are part of this network. (F5) credibility To show our business model works, incubators are a tremendous help. (F1) public reach We took part in a social media campaign. That was definitely good for our reach. (F3) reputation Our reputation may be enhanced by being connected to the Impact Factory. (F4) seal of approval To have a seal from an accelerator has helped in a conversation with business angels. This was really an advantage. (R4, also F1, F4 and R3) trust It’s important for a lot of start-ups: you need things that inspire trust. (F1, also F4) Validation: negative views hard to measure I doubt this really has a measurable effect or will bring a return. (F2, also F5) low brand recognition Maybe this has an effect subconsciously, but the accelerator is not really known. I wouldn’t say that there is significant validation. (R5, also R1 and R4) wrong timing The Impact Factory may have been too late - we opened a lot of doors ourselves. (R2) Validation: conducive branding With the Factory, the name speaks for itself. (F3) popularity The better known the incubator, the better for the start-up. (F3) reciprocity We took part in a social media campaign of the Impact Factory. That was definitely good for our reach, but also the other way round. (F3) scale effects In a start-up there is always a certain amount of marketing that you have to do, and the more partner logos you have, the better it is. (R3) Creating visibility Creating visibility: conducive public events What helped us the most were public events, where investors attended. (R3, also F1) storytelling help We realized bringing it across is incredibly complicated. We should have worked on that, explaining it simply with storytelling. (F3). Creating visibility: detrimental forced rankings We pitched a lot at the beginning with rankings. I was at the bottom of the list, and that always pulled me down. I don’t have any benefit from that. (R2) social distancing We had bad luck, because of Corona we couldn’t pitch. (R1) superficiality You should not put much effort into making everything look great, and if someone asks 2 or 3 questions, the whole thing collapses. (F4) Note. All quotes are taken from the interviews and translated from German by the author. of the original framework of organizational sponsorship proposed by Amezcua et al. (2013). While buffering aims to insulate new organizations against external threats and market pressures, bridging enhances their chances of survival by facilitating access to external resources, promoting knowledge spillovers, and increasing their legitimacy. This study, however, follows Breivik-Meyer (2020, p. 181) in extending the original framework with a third mechanism, boosting, to understand how sponsorship can “not only promote survival, but also increase the growth of new firms”. Originally proposed by Autio and Rannikko (2016), this mechanism comprises two activities of organizational sponsors aimed at boosting the capacity for growth of new ventures: setting and controlling milestone achievement, and promoting networking among peers. Milestones and Progress Tracking. The first intervention of the boosting mechanism refers to setting and controlling milestones to accelerate the development of new ventures. Unlike the other interventions discussed so far, this activity has been rarely mentioned in the reviewed literature, at least by this name. The exemplary services portfolio (see Appendix) included only three activities that could be subsumed under this intervention: “pressure and discipline” (Miller & Bound,2011), “ongoing proof of concept” (Dempwolf et al., 2014), and “counseling services to track progress” (Pauwels et al.,2016). Admittedly, incubators and accelerators can accelerate their ventures through other activities, like mentoring and coaching. By organizing a demo day at the end of their program, for example, accelerators can set ambitious deadlines. Regardless, it is worth exploring how social start-ups assess this service. Can – and should – organizational sponsors accelerate the development of new start-ups by setting and tracking concrete milestones? When asked directly whether incubators or accelerators add value by setting milestones, the social start-ups N. Manhart /Junior Management Science 7(2) (2022) 289-337320 Table 19: Bridging 3.1 – Experiences with External Funding Willingness to take on external investment F1 Yes Early research grant from a tech fund R1 No No suitable match yet F2 No Repeatedly approached, but always refused so far R2 No No interest in outside capital yet F3 Yes Financing round planned R3 Yes First financing round ongoing F4 No No interest in outside capital R4 Yes Working with business angels F5 Yes Business angels from the start, VC financing planned R5 No No suitable match yet Negative views of the incubator’s support R1 I realized quickly that the Impact Factory can’t help me find any investors who are ready to finance the branches at conditions where I can repay them. R2 A workshop on funding, where all kinds of sources were described, left me disappointed. I need someone who finally listens to what I need. R3 When I look at the investors we are talking with right now, there was no direct contact through the network of the accelerator. But of course, it helps if you get an intro. R4 The business angels we are working with did not come through the Impact Factory. We would have liked to focus more on this and a little bit earlier. R5 With the Impact Factory, the focus is not so clearly on financing. Note. All quotes and information are taken from the interviews and translated from German by the author. Table 20: Bridging 3.2 – Perspectives on External Funding Second order code First order code Representative quotes and further mentions Access barriers cultural I talked to banks and I asked for 35,000 euros, which is peanuts. And the risk is nothing. Yet they said: What you have in mind does not fit into our spreadsheet. (R2) financial Investors want a share, eight percent would probably be cheap. But we simply lack this profit motive. We have built the company completely differently. (R1, also R3) legal We are a company in steward ownership. We have committed to reinvesting all profits and donating the rest. This is not yet established in the financing landscape. (R3) Investor selection criteria impact commitment If I would even think about working with a business angel or bring in an external investor, then only if the social impact component is safeguarded. (F2) long-term perspective We are looking for somebody who wants to give patient capital and share in the profits. Not just put money in and bang, away with it. (F3) mission alignment We didn’t want to take the classic start-up path of directly taking on investor who is not 100 percent committed to the development and the impact idea. (R5) Rewards of external funding accelerate growth I don’t want to depend on external people. But if you spend a little money, it goes faster, and in the end, it may be more efficient. (R2) increase resources Investments are something every founder thinks about. You ask yourself: Does it make sense to raise capital somewhere else, because your resources are always limited. (F2) Risks of external funding internal conflict I would end up sitting at the table with an investor who may not have the same goal as me, which could lead to major conflicts about how to run the company. (F2) loss of control You have to be careful not to let people take too many shares. There are many traps. It can get a bit ugly. (F3) mission drift You could get investors with return expectations, but in the end you don’t solve the problem. I don’t want to charge 35 euros per hour to look after a poor mother. (R1) wrong incentives They say: If you grow 15x in the first few years and we increase our money fivefold, than that’s cool, but the impact is not the main focus. That is a pity. (R5, also F3) Note. All quotes are taken from the interviews and translated from German by the author. N. Manhart /Junior Management Science 7(2) (2022) 289-337 321 seemed indifferent. In the ranking of sponsorship activities (Table 11), both ramp-ups and fellows ranked milestone setting eighth out of nine. A more nuanced picture emerged when they discussed the Impact Factory’s role in accelerating their growth. Table 21 shows that two founders benefited from regular milestones set by the Impact Factory, whereas the other founders described no effect. Interestingly, this response suggested a clear demographic divide: The two positive views were expressed by very experienced founders (R1 and R2), whereas the four youngest respondents in the sample were also the least convinced of the benefits of milestones set by an accelerator. Nevertheless, even the skeptical founders mentioned activities that incubators and accelerators can use to accelerate their growth, such as setting tight deadlines, providing focus and structure, monitoring progress, and flagging blind spots. The importance of speed was repeatedly highlighted – in line with recent findings that “time-compressed scaling” is a distinguishing feature of successful start-up acceleration (Shankar & Clausen,2020, p. 102174). Accelerators also resolve uncertainty faster (Yu,2020) and shorten learning cycles by providing intensive consultation and rapid feedback (Cohen, Bingham, & Hallen,2019). By contrast, there is no consensus in the literature on the value of setting ambitious goals, which R3 argued for. While some founders welcome forced progress (Miller & Bound, 2011, p. 28), others perceive too much intervention by incubators as an interference (Patton, Warren, & Bream,2009, p. 629). The perception of this activity appears to depend on the motivation and drive of the founders. Two founders (F2 and R3) even suggested that an accelerator should help founders slow down, rather than accelerate, by providing balance and emotional support. In this sense, Table 21 reflects that all start-ups in this study (except R1) had completed the program successfully and developed, or even launched, a product or service. As a highly driven group, their socialmission focus provided a sufficient boost without the need for external milestone setting. Peer Networking. The value of external networking was addressed as part of the bridging mechanism. Nonetheless, peer networking is discussed separately here for its potential effect on the “rapid organizational growth” of start-ups through the “exchange of experiential insights” (Autio & Rannikko,2016, p. 44). Organizational sponsors can boost the acceleration of start-ups by serving as connective intermediaries between them (Breivik-Meyer,2020, p. 181). The conceptual uniqueness of peer networking as an incubator service was confirmed partially by the literature. 40% of the studies on social incubators and accelerators in the exemplary services portfolio (see Appendix) mentioned networking with like-minded entrepreneurs or peers. Studies on conventional incubators and accelerators named this activity only once (Miller & Bound,2011). However, this must be qualified to the extent that accelerator studies frequently describe how ventures “enter and exit the programs in groups, known as cohorts or batches” (Cohen,2013, p. 22) – and the effect these activities have on them. Accelerators regularly foster collaboration between their start-ups through explicit and implicit activities, such as common working spaces and specialized sessions (Drori & Wright,2018, p. 11). Encouraging peer support between start-ups can take some of the burden off the accelerator management team, allowing it to “focus on bringing in outside expertise” (Miller & Bound,2011, p. 10). The Impact Factory, for example, hosted regular sessions for peer exchange. For the founders in this study, peer networking was a motive for joining the incubator in the first place: Four founders named “peer exchange” as a resource need to be addressed in the program (Table 9), while “networking” received seven mentions. The ranking of sponsorship services indicated similar priorities: Ramp-ups and fellows ranked “peer networking” fourth out of nine, below “access to external networks” (Table 11). This mid-table result was surprising, considering how enthusiastic the founders responded when asked directly about their assessment of peer networking. As Table 22 shows, almost all the founders praised their exchanges with other start-ups in the Impact Factory – even those, like F1, F3, and R3, who ranked it only in fifth or sixth place in the ranking of services. The positive assessment in Table 22 presents a stark contrast to a survey of 4,000 social entrepreneurs who, in applying for accelerator programs, considered peer networking “unimportant to their venture success” and “the least important benefit” (Pandey et al.,2017, p. 19). Another study of start-ups in a technology incubator in Hong Kong delivered an even bleaker verdict on peer networking, reporting that all firms “shut the door, work alone and never chat on product, market and business-related topics” – with tenants going as far as competing, rather than cooperating (K. Chan & Lau,2005, p. 1226). The results in Table 22 suggest that the Impact Factory was a rather different environment. The founders highlighted the positive effects of peer networking, including joint learning, exchanging ideas, and mutual support. Four founders emphasized the importance of helping less experienced peers. These views confirmed Cohen (2013, p. 22) observation that the cohort experience “fosters uncommonly strong bonds and communal identity between the founders”. The respondents also named success factors for peer networking. First, cohort selection is key: The founders agreed that peer effects are strongest when peers share values and norms but are not too closely matched (S. Smith, Hannigan, & Gasiorowski,2015, p. 27). A lack of direct competition fosters transparency and information sharing, which can boost performance (Cohen, Bingham, & Hallen,2019). Second, building a strong alumni network, which is an asset of prominent accelerator programs (Miller & Bound,2011). Third, enabling physical co-location, although the views here were mixed. R5 agreed with Duff (1994) that proximity was crucial, while R4 welcomed the remote exchange despite the forced Covid-19 restrictions. In sum, peer networking was mostly seen as beneficial. Interestingly, the emotional value of peer exchange was assessed more positively than its prac- N. Manhart /Junior Management Science 7(2) (2022) 289-337322 Table 21: Boosting 1 – Milestones and Progress Tracking Second order code First order code Representative quotes and further mentions Did growth accelerate? yes You set priorities in a relatively short time frame, talk them through and see if they are possible or not. That was actually the good part for me. (R1, also R2) maybe You can always look back and say: maybe we could have gotten further. (F2) no I don’t think it had any impact on our development. We are simply very market driven and our competitors pushed the envelope. (R4, also F3, R3 and R5) How to accelerate ambitious goals The Impact Factory is an impact bubble. Other accelerators have more of an economic focus and a tougher approach. This mixture is essential if you have a hybrid form. (R3) flag blind spots That definitely accelerated things, because I simply didn’t have certain topics on my radar, for example the question of my legal form. (R2, also R4). focus and structure Gut feeling always plays a role in founding, but structure is also very important. Focus, prioritization and structure are the most important drivers. (F2, also R5). regular monitoring I think the exchange with mentors, and also having a check-up on a regular basis, can help a lot. I think it increases accountability. (R5, also R3) tight deadlines It would have been more helpful if we had done the whole thing in less time. Make it compact at the start and less frequent as we develop. (R4, also R1). How to slow down emotional support Managing a company tests your limits every day. I believe an incubator can help you see the lightness of the whole thing and say: hey, it’s not so bad. (F2) balance The founder who talks about his 70 hours a week also needs balance. You often see it portrayed in the media. And that’s just wrong. Accelerators can have a big influence and invite people to speak about how you can create balance. (R3) Note. All quotes are taken from the interviews and translated from German by the author. tical benefit compared to other incubator interventions. 4.3.5. Impact Acceleration The three sponsorship mechanisms presented so far, while helpful for understanding the perception of incubator and accelerator support, are not unique to social start-ups but applicable to various types of organizational support. Yet, this study seeks to address the question raised by J. Hausberg and Korreck (2017, p. 13): If social businesses face different challenges, do they also require a different kind of assistance? Therefore, this thesis asks whether – and how – incubators and accelerators need to tailor their services portfolio to social start-ups. During the coding process, two incubator benefits emerged that particularly suited the needs of social start-ups: “demonstrating social impact” and “delivering the social mission.” Together, they can be regarded as a novel support mechanism called impact acceleration, in addition to the buffering, bridging, and boosting mechanisms already discussed. The Uniqueness of Accelerating Social Start-Ups. Social and conventional start-ups share the aim of developing innovative and market-oriented solutions. However, the pursuit of social value creation also characterizes social start-ups. Table 7presented six manifestations of this social-mission focus: Three shared with conventional start-ups (independence, sustainability, and long-term thinking), and three that primarily relate to social start-ups (priority of purpose, credible impact, and hybridity). The study of nine incubator and accelerator services in Section 4.3 highlighted where the needs and perceptions of social start-ups differ from conventional start-ups, for instance regarding funding, networking, and training. Nonetheless, this study has yet to address explicitly what is specific about the acceleration of social start-ups. Do these ventures require support activities beyond the support traditionally offered by incubators and accelerators, i.e., the three mechanisms of the organizational sponsorship framework? Answering this question is not straightforward – and the extant literature provides no consensus view, to the extent it has addressed this question at all. Even though this study did not include a control group for a systematic comparison, it sought to answer this question according to social start-ups. As Table 23 shows, the respondents identified similarities in support needs, including finding a marketable product or service, solving a real need, and building a successful business model around it. As F5 said, “the initial challenges are the same for all start-ups.” Yet, the founders also named differences in support needs – from legal know-how to finding employees and investors with the right motivation for social start-ups. But even if these needs are specific to social start-ups, incubators and accelerators should fulfill them with the mechanisms of organizational sponsorship – for example, by providing legal training or matching start-ups with impact-driven investors. This is not the case, however, for the two support needs most frequently mentioned in Table 23: “demonstrating social impact” and “delivering the social mission,” which were both raised by five founders. In the case of these two activi- N. Manhart /Junior Management Science 7(2) (2022) 289-337 323 Table 22: Boosting 2 – Peer Networking Second order code First order code Representative quotes and further mentions Assessment positive Super essential. (F1) /Very, very good. (F2) /Simply exciting and fun. (F3) /Always great. (F4) /Awesome. (F5) /Very good overall. (R2) /It worked well. (R3) /Brilliant and very helpful. (R4) /One of the best things about the Impact Factory. (R5) mixed Yes, we used that. With one team we might cooperate in future. You just have to see. (R1) Positive effects learning from peers I think you can learn best from each other. You don’t have to make the same mistakes again and again - unless you have an eternity to learn. (F1, also mentioned by F3 and F4) exchanging ideas The exchange was very open, very transparent. There was a lot of trust and the exchange itself worked very well despite the physical distance. (R4, also R3) giving back Everyone asks for help. I have always agreed and said: now’s the time to give back a little, even if I don’t have the time. It’s support for the right people. (R2, also F1, F5 and R1) mutual support Building a start-up is a sinus curve. You’re always super motivated and then super depressed. In these phases the exchange with other start-ups is super valuable. (R3, also R5) social contacts As a founder you tend to stay in your bubble, immersed in your business. The greatest value for me is the contact with other founders. Being a founder is a bit lonely. (F2, also R3, R5) Success factors alumni community When a program ends, the contact disappears very quickly, and that’s a real pity. How could you somehow create a better alumni management? (R5, also F5 and R3) cohort diversity If you look at the founder profiles, we are all very different. There are people who had a life before, and others are younger. I think the mixture actually works pretty well. (R2, also F3) physical colocation We can see it with accelerators that took place digitally. The networking was practically zero. You don’t have a really lasting exchange and that’s a great, great pity. (R5) value alignment I don’t come from an entrepreneurial family. Suddenly you find like-minded people and realize you’re not the only crazy person - there are others who tick like you. (F2, also R4, R5) Note. All quotes are taken from the interviews and translated from German by the author. Quotes for the "positive" assessment were shortened as the full quote provided no further context. ties, which emerged in the interviews, social start-ups expect an incubator or accelerator to provide benefits that go beyond the support activities discussed so far. Thus, it is of interest to analyze these two activities in more detail. Demonstrating Social Impact. Noting that social startups expect their social impact to be included in the acceleration process may seem self-explanatory. However, this activity is far less prevalent than might be assumed. A study of impact accelerators has found that frequently “developing social impact models was not a core offering” (King et al.,2015, p. 13). This is reflected by the exemplary services portfolio (see Appendix), as only three out of 10 studies on social incubators and accelerators mentioned activities related to measuring and improving social impact. A quantitative study of 83 Italian incubator managers has found that they “gave little importance to social impact measurement services” (Sansone et al.,2020, p. 7); surprisingly, even among social incubators less than half (44%) had social impact metrics for their tenants (p. 8). The low prevalence of impact measurement services in the service portfolio of incubators and accelerators stands in contrast to the needs of social start-ups. In a survey of German social entrepreneurs, 71% reported having established impact goals and 23% were planning to do so (DSEM,2020, p. 40), just as the social start-ups in this study mentioned “demonstrating credible impact” as one of their motives in Table 7. F5 summarized this view: As a social start-up, “you have to have [impact measurement], that’s your legitimation for saying I really want to achieve outcome and impact. And I am quite rigorous. You have to be serious about that.” However, even when the impact is at the core of a social entrepreneur’s mission, as for F5, there are barriers to demonstrating the impact effectively that an incubator or accelerator can help overcome. Table 24 explores four reasons why incubators and accelerators, in the view of social start-ups, should support them in demonstrating their impact. The first two relate to the ubiquity of the term impact and related concepts such as sustainability. For entrepreneurs who take their social or environmental impact seriously, it is difficult to stand out from the myriad of companies seeking to benefit from this trend. This challenge is exacerbated at an early stage, when a ven- N. Manhart /Junior Management Science 7(2) (2022) 289-337324 Table 23: Comparing the Support Needs of Social and Conventional Start-Ups Second order code First order code Representative quotes and further mentions Similarities build a successful business model Normal accelerators show you how to build a business model and quickly validate it on the market. You need the same in an impact accelerator. (R3, also F3, R4) find a marketable product The initial challenges are the same for all start-ups. At the beginning you need a product that is marketable. That core challenge is really the same for everyone. (F5) solve a real need You have to be passionate about your product, you have to see a social or a purely economic need, or maybe a market-driven need, which is the same in the end. (F1) Differences storytelling Maybe marketing and storytelling is also different for impact start-ups. You can communicate the story more forcefully. (R5, also mentioned by F3) find the right investors I think especially for social start-ups, a different group of investors might be interesting, or an additional group of investors. (F3, also R3) find the right legal form But also questions such as the structure of a social business and its legal form. (R3, also F1 and R5) hire and retain the right talent In a classic start-up you have to motivate people with money. But how do you motivate a team if it doesn’t necessarily have to be monetary? (R5, also R2) deliver the social mission The difference, in our view, is that no matter whether you talk about profit or not, you always take the idea of impact into account. (R4, also F4, F5, R2 and R3) demonstrate social impact Impact measurement is certainly very relevant for us. I think this is something that is very specific for impact start-ups. (R5, also mentioned by F3, F5, R3 and R4) Note. All quotes are taken from the interviews and translated from German by the author. ture’s impact is hypothetical or small, and the way to measure it “may change with scale” (Miller & Stacey,2014, p. 27). At the same time, F4 argued that conventional start-ups tend to benefit from a positive bias for start-ups, even when their social impact is negligible – or even negative. F5 added that larger companies are still reluctant to engage with social start-ups to increase their impact. Table 24 also shows that incubators or accelerators can support social start-ups in a multitude of ways to address the challenge of demonstrating social impact. First, by helping to develop concrete and measurable impact metrics. Originally associated with international development, social impact can be defined as “significant or lasting changes in people’s lives, brought about by a given action or series of actions” (Roche, 1999, p. 21). Beyond this widely accepted definition, the term remains contested, referring alternatively to effects at the individual, organizational, and societal level (Ebrahim & Rangan,2014;Gupta et al.,2020). The lack of credible indicators and metrics for social impact remains a development barrier for social ventures (Arena et al.,2018, p. 161). A survey by the EU has identified “common mechanisms for measuring and demonstrating impact” as a key factor for the visibility of social enterprises (Wilkinson,2015, p. 99). While the standardization of impact metrics is beyond the scope of any single institution, an incubator can still support social start-ups by educating them about established frameworks, such as the Theory of Change or Social Return on Investment. Indeed, a survey of 20,000 social ventures has shown that lack of awareness was a key reason for the low adoption rate (25%) of established impact measurement systems (Global Accelerator Learning Initiative,2020, p. 9). In contrast, training and peer interaction in an accelerator were strongly related to the adoption of social performance measurement (Lall,2017, p. 2649). Additionally, Table 24 suggests incubators can help startups to apply impact metrics at the operational level and relate them to frameworks such as the SDGs. Thus, incubators can support social start-ups by focusing on substance, rather than presentation, when it comes to social impact. As F4 put it: “You should not put so much effort into making everything look great on the surface – and if someone asks two or three questions, the whole thing collapses like a house of cards.” Delivering the Social Mission. The results in Table 23 show that incubators and accelerators not only have a role in helping social start-ups to quantify and demonstrate their social impact. They can also support them in achieving it. While this phenomenon has not been studied extensively to date, there are indications that incubators and accelerators can provide added value by improving social start-ups’ “ability and readiness to deliver predictable and consistent social impact,” as a survey of impact-oriented incubators and accelerators in Europe has suggested (Gianoncelli et al.,2020, p. 25). To explore what the added value of an incubator or accelerator in delivering the social mission might entail, Table 25 categorizes the views of social start-ups into three activities: nurturing a culture of humility, authenticity, and sustainability; selecting an impact-driven community, ideas, and values; and supporting social start-ups to navigate impact and profit, manage hybridity, and safeguard their emotional wellbeing. The expectations expressed in Table 25 suggest that an incubator’s role is not only to provide social start-ups with N. Manhart /Junior Management Science 7(2) (2022) 289-337 325 Table 24: Impact Acceleration 1 – Demonstrating Social Impact Second order code First order code Representative quotes Why an incubator should help sustainability hype I would say everyone is doing it by now. Even normal start-ups. It is simply very much desired by society. Sustainability is much more relevant than five years ago. (F1) green washing I’m surrounded by advertising now where big companies write: Sustainability is not a luxury. And this is true. But I still have to be able to differentiate myself. (F2) positive bias for start-ups Just because it’s a start-up, people are already applauding. Monsanto was a startup once. Just because you’re a start-up doesn’t make you a good company. (F4) reluctance by large companies When I tell companies about the impact chain, you can actually apply it to them quite well. But it is still completely foreign to them and nobody expects or demands it. (F5) How an incubator can help develop concrete impact metrics The most important point for me: how do you make impact really understandable and measurable with concrete metrics. This is where incubators can really help. (F2) include KPIs at operational level We want to include impact KPIs in our balanced scorecard, in our monitoring. We haven’t done that yet, but it is on our list. (F3) connect to global goals We wanted to do something for people without electricity. We stumbled upon the SDGs and realized there are global goals. How can we link them to what we are doing? (F3) be an impact sparring partner It is very important in such an incubator to check out the motivation. Everyone can say: Hey, we are a social start-up. But what kind of impact do we actually want to have? (F4) Note. All quotes are taken from the interviews and translated from German by the author. resources, skills, and contacts to survive in competitive markets – the traditional goals of organizational sponsorship. It should also create an environment of trust and mutual support to sustain social entrepreneurs in fulfilling their social mission. This finding is backed up by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, which has found that fear of failure is more pronounced among social than conventional enterprises, since “fail fast” for them is often not an option (Zimmer & Pearson,2019, July). Also, social entrepreneurs feel a strong affective commitment to the beneficiaries of their causes (Renko,2013, p. 1047). As a result, “too many founders feel the weight of the world on their shoulders and don’t find a way of sharing it around” (Miller & Stacey,2014, p. 11). Beyond accelerating their growth, incubators and accelerators can play a pivotal role in taking an emotional – and material – load off the shoulders of social entrepreneurs. 4.4. Motives for Entrepreneurial Self-Reliance The previous Section 4.3 explored how social start-ups perceive the benefits of different sponsorship mechanisms. However, the sponsorship literature has observed that resource munificence is not universally beneficial but contingent on boundary conditions (Amezcua et al.,2013;Flynn, 1993b;Jourdan & Kivleniece,2017). Therefore, “new ventures ought to evaluate carefully the potential impact of accepting such benefits” (Amezcua et al.,2013, p. 1645). Nascent entrepreneurs in Germany seem to heed this advice, considering that only 50% of them seek professional assistance, although “professional consultancy for potential entrepreneurs is highly subsidized and inexpensive” (Brixy, Sternberg, & Stüber,2013, p. 157). This observation also applies to social entrepreneurs, as 51% of them have benefited from a support program (DSEM,2020, p. 50). Yet, the same survey has also pointed out that of the 49% who did seek support, 37% participated in at least two programs. This is consistent with a global survey of 20,000 social enterprises who applied for an accelerator program, in which around a third had prior accelerator experience (Global Accelerator Learning Initiative,2020, p. 8). Overall, a dichotomy appears: every second founder prefers to go it alone, while one in three uses multiple programs. The views of the 10 start-ups in this study were similarly polarized. As Table 10 showed earlier, three founders (F2, F4, and F5) decided not to participate in any program beyond the fellow status of the Impact Factory, which came with minimal participation requirements. By contrast, five teams took part in multiple programs – in two (R2), three (R3 and F3), and more than five (R5 and F1), depending on the definition of a support program. Understanding the factors driving these decisions would be highly beneficial for the design of entrepreneurial support programs. However, no clear pattern emerged between the decision to join a program and the characteristics of the N. Manhart /Junior Management Science 7(2) (2022) 289-337326 Table 25: Impact Acceleration 2 – Delivering the Social Mission Second order code First order code Representative quotes Nurture humility I like the climate, the exchange, the fact that nobody feels superior. There are no people with big egos who are there only to show off or to just put on an act. (R2) authenticity How can you build a company that is not only green on the outside, but also treats employees and resources sensibly internally? (R3) sustainability What we liked very much was, of course, simply this mindset of sustainability, which is taken very seriously there. (R4) Select the right community We could identify with it right away because it was a program specifically designed for social start-ups. The feeling was that there was obviously a community. (F2) the right ideas Incubators are often too business driven, although they have to be. What convinced me about the Impact Factory was that they go for sustainable start-up ideas. (F1) the right values It is important that the values of an investor or incubator match with a social startup. It is the foundation that someone who comes into this company has the same values. (F2) Support to navigate impact and profit You have to add an additional component. What is the social impact of your start-up, what is the social dimension of your legal form or how you deal with profits? (R3) to manage hybridity You move in a strong field of tension. You have to be heard on the market, otherwise you will go down brutally. But you must not overdo it and stray from your values. (F2) to safeguard wellbeing Funding an impact enterprise is a bit different. You put your heart into it and there is the danger you do too much, because your work is multiplied for the good of others. (R5) Note. All quotes are taken from the interviews and translated from German by the author. founders, such as industry, age, and professional background. Hence, this study inquired about the motives for not joining a support program. The motivation that emerged from the interviews, called entrepreneurial self-reliance, did not amount to an outright rejection of external support, at least for most founders. Rather, it indicated a deliberate consideration of the advantages and disadvantages of seeking support. Before discussing these findings, a note of caution. The decision of a social start-up to join a support program is driven by various factors, ranging from the availability of suitable programs to physical proximity, resource considerations, and venture stage (Chmiliar,2010). It was beyond the scope of this study to analyze these factors in detail. Instead, this section aims to present common motives that, from the point of view of social start-ups, reduce the subjective value of participating in entrepreneurial support programs. By taking them into consideration, incubators and accelerators can increase their attractiveness for these ventures. As Table 26 indicates, the motives for entrepreneurial self-reliance expressed by the founders in this study can be summarized in three categories: resource trade-offs, previous experiences, and concerns about a negative impact on a start-up’s development. Among these motives, resource trade-offs were the most prominent, given that seven out of 10 founders regard “time” as their main concern – an indication that participating in a support program comes with significant opportunity costs. In a way, time can be considered a reverse proxy for the overall value of a program. As the previous sections have shown, an incubator or accelerator can also speed up developments and save time when its services are considered beneficial. This trade-off is captured by F1: “Of course, some things repeat themselves. You lose time participating in multiple programs. But if you don’t do it, there are lot of things you miss out on.” Financial resources were not mentioned as a factor, probably because the Impact Factory was a subsidized program that did not charge fees or provide funding. The start-ups also failed to address a resource trade-off frequently cited in the sponsorship literature, namely the risk of an incubating environment “artificially inflated with resources” that could make an organization vulnerable in the long run (Flynn, 1993b, p. 56) – a phenomenon also known as the “lifesupport incubation trap” (Clarysse, Wright, & Van Hove, 2015, p. 19). The second motive was previous experiences. While the results did not show a clear demographic divide, trends still became visible. The three founders who decided not to join formal support programs (F2, F4, and F5) all had more than 10 years of professional experience (see Table 7). Moreover, F4 and F5 were the only founders who had already launched a social-purpose organization before their current venture – in line with a study that found that serial entrepreneurs were less likely to seek professional assistance (Brixy et al.,2013, p. 158). More experienced founders “tend to view a large part of the educational program as redundant and a waste of time” (Drori & Wright,2018, p. 8). In contrast, three of N. Manhart /Junior Management Science 7(2) (2022) 289-337 327 Table 26: Motives for Entrepreneurial Self-Reliance Second order code First order code Representative quotes and further mentions Concerns need for autonomy Attendance lists like at university would be negative, because the needs of each start-up are individual. You have to maintain a certain openness. (F2) information overload There are strong distractors. It’s important to believe in your idea, even though others may not see it that way. Incubators can be great sources of knowledge, but it is important to find the balance between what is brought in from outside and what you decide yourself. (F2) fear of rejection When you do something new, you always have to explain and defend yourself, especially in Germany where everybody is critical of what you do. You have to learn this is absolutely normal and take critical feedback on board without taking everything to heart. (R3) Previous experiences as founders Did we consciously decide against it? Yes, I would say so. We were both very experienced founders, both over 50. (F5) with incubators We have gone through five incubator programs with different emphasis. That is perhaps the disadvantage, that they are too similar. (R5, also mentioned by F1) Resource trade-offs surrendering equity I always find that difficult, because especially at this early stage you might not even want to think about giving away shares. (R3, also R4) time investment It was an investment in time, just going to Duisburg at the beginning, that was quite a distance. We are limited in terms of our resources. (R4, also F1, F4, F5, R1, R2, R5) travel expenses Well, we invested our time and paid for our travel expenses. (R1, also R4) Note. All quotes are taken from the interviews and translated from German by the author. the four teams who took part in more than three programs (F1, F3, R3, and R5) founded their ventures after finishing university, which indicated a greater willingness to seek external support. However, even younger founders such as R5 became more selective over time, carefully weighing whether the program justified the time invested. Finally, the broadest motive was concerns about a possible negative impact on a start-up’s development. While these concerns might appear counterintuitive, considering the mostly positive assessment of incubator and accelerator services by the founders, they have also been observed in the literature. In particular, the founders voiced three concerns. First, the need for autonomy highlighted by F2. McAdam and McAdam (2008, p. 288) have also argued that young firms grow reluctant of incubator support as it could be associated with “newness, vulnerability and inexperience”. This might be one reason why, in a study of 52 impact-focused accelerators worldwide, 75% worked with ventures at a prototype stage and only 23% at a growth stage (Lall et al.,2013, p. 114). A second concern was information overload. F2 stressed the importance of following your instincts and having the freedom to experiment – which might be constrained by a rigid program. The importance of flexibility has been highlighted by Shankar and Clausen (2020, p. 102174), who argued that early-stage start-ups are not an ideal target group for an acceleration program that leaves limited room for pivots. However, this concern could also be a sign of cognitive biases such as overconfidence or confirmation bias (Cohen, Bingham, & Hallen,2019). F2 admitted as much by asking: “You can always look back and ask – would we be further ahead if we had gotten support early on? Maybe yes, but maybe we would have ended up in a very different place.” A third concern, fear of rejection, was named by R3, who described the risk of receiving negative feedback early on when the start-up still rests on a brittle foundation. Miller and Stacey called this effect “mentor whiplash” – when teams “find themselves getting conflicting advice and are confused about which direction to take” (Miller & Stacey,2014, p. 38). Together, these motives show that social start-ups critically weigh the benefits of a support program before joining it. 5. Discussion The purpose of the present thesis is to improve the understanding of a novel phenomenon – the acceleration of startups aiming to tackle societal or environmental challenges. With the aid of an inductive study of multiple cases, the study explored how social start-ups perceived the activities of incubators and accelerators. The results indicate that the social-mission focus of these ventures led to significant differences in how they perceived incubator benefits as compared to commercial ventures. Consequently, this thesis argues that incubators and accelerators should adapt their services to social start-ups. Moreover, it presents a systematic assessment of the mechanisms of organizational sponsorship from the perspective of social start-ups. As its main theoretical contribution, this study extends the organizational sponsorship framework by proposing a novel support mechanism: impact acceleration. Finally, this study explored how social start- N. Manhart /Junior Management Science 7(2) (2022) 289-337328 ups decide between joining a formal support program and depending on entrepreneurial self-reliance. The following section discusses the relevance of these findings in three stages. After clarifying their theoretical contributions, it addresses their practical implications for designing and running entrepreneurial support programs. It closes by addressing the limitations of the present research and by highlighting promising avenues for future inquiries. 5.1. Theoretical Contributions Evaluating existing theory with a deductive approach was not the aim of this study. Rather, it sought to identify common patterns and develop theoretical constructs to link qualitative evidence with deductive research (Eisenhardt & Graebner,2007). In light of sparse prior research, this study drew on three emerging strands of research: social start-ups, incubators and accelerators, and organizational sponsorship. This section discusses the findings’ contribution to these three literature streams. 5.1.1. Contributions to the Literature on Social Start-Ups There is a widely held view that hybridity – the pursuit of financial goals and social purpose – defines social enterprises (Dacin et al.,2010;Doherty et al.,2014;Gupta et al., 2020). However, how the “primacy of the social mission,” as Nicholls (2006, p. 20) has called it, shapes their perception of entrepreneurial support remains unclear. To investigate this question, this study adopted the perspective of social start-ups – unlike most research on entrepreneurial support, which has focused on the views of incubators. Thanks to this approach, this study offers two contributions to the literature on social start-ups: 1) how the social-mission focus influences key strategic and operational decisions and 2) how it affects the way that social start-ups acquire external resources. The Social-Mission Focus in Practice. The first insight is that founders of social start-ups, consistent with the literature, do prioritize the pursuit of a social mission over commercial motives. The interviews highlighted the emphasis on achieving societal or environmental goals – often at the expense of growth or revenue targets. Social entrepreneurs value their autonomy, pay great attention to sustainability, and aim to achieve a credible impact. Yet, they are also aware of the competing and sometimes conflicting demands that come with hybridity, such as avoiding mission drift or having to raise external funding. Founders with a corporate background appeared particularly keen to distance themselves from their previous experiences in business. The second insight relates to how the social-mission focus “affects how social entrepreneurs perceive and assess opportunities” (Dees,1998, p. 2). The results of this study confirm that the social mission influences key design and operational decisions of a social start-up (Wilson & Post,2013) – starting with its resource needs. The respondents regarded knowledge, personal support, and social capital as more pressing needs than the provision of financial or physical capital. A similar picture emerged in the assessment of sponsorship services, as the provision of funding ranked consistently lower than relational benefits, education, and validation. Intending to maximize social value, the founders expressed little interest in material gains and appeared selective when it came to seed funding or external investors. They sacrificed potential returns, sought to anchor their social impact at all operational levels, and in two cases (R2 and R3) chose a legal form that prevented them from distributing profits even though it reduced their appeal for investors. Additionally, the results illustrate that pursuing a social mission is not a binary decision but manifests itself to varying degrees, as some founders prioritized the mission more than others. In a way, this mirrored their founding motivations, which indicated a broad spectrum of motives – in line with Germak and Robinson (2014, p. 18) observation that the motivations of social entrepreneurs are not one-dimensional but a “unique blend of motivational components”. For the founders in this study, tackling societal challenges was an important but not exclusive motivation. Seeking fulfillment and developing innovative solutions were also major motivational drivers. In that respect, the founders showed significant overlap with founders of conventional start-ups. It would be interesting to determine why the socialmission focus varied in intensity among the founders, as the motivation of social entrepreneurs has frequently been studied in the context of their personality traits or demographic factors (Gupta et al.,2020). However, owing to the research design and the relative homogeneity of the sample, this study could not observe a causal link between founder characteristics and the degree to which founders emphasized the social-mission focus. This focus was equally evident for both younger founders and more experienced entrepreneurs who enjoyed greater material security after successful prior careers. Acquiring External Resources. Building on the socialmission focus and founding motivations, this study also explored how social start-ups acquire external resources. This is a key step for studying the acceleration process. According to the resource-based view, which underpins the theory of organizational sponsorship, incubators and accelerators provide nascent ventures with tangible and intangible resources to support their survival and growth (Carayannis & Von Zedtwitz,2005;McAdam & McAdam,2008;Rothaermel & Thursby,2005). The literature on social entrepreneurship features two main arguments regarding the resource needs of social startups. First, they require resource inputs broadly similar to those that conventional entrepreneurs need (Austin et al., 2012;Dacin et al.,2010). Second, they face challenges in attracting the resources necessary to scale (Austin et al.,2012; Lall et al.,2013). Hence, the resource-constrained environment in which social start-ups operate should make them receptive to external assistance to support their survival and growth (Pandey et al.,2017, p. 8). The first argument is only partially confirmed by the results. Like most nascent ventures, the social start-ups in this N. Manhart /Junior Management Science 7(2) (2022) 289-337 335 References Adkins, D. (2011). What are the new seed or venture accelerators? NBIA Review. Retrieved from https://inbia.org/wp-content/uploads/ 2018/07/Accelerators.pdf?x62369 Aernoudt, R. (2004). Incubators: Tool for entrepreneurship? Small Business Economics,32(2), 127–135. Albort-Morant, G., & Ribeiro-Soriano, D. (2016). A bibliometric analysis of international impact of business incubators. Journal of Business Research,69(5), 1775–1779. Aldrich, E. R., H. auch Auster. (1986). Even dwarfs started small: Liabilities of age and size and their strategic implications. Research in Organizational Behavior,8, 165–198. Alter, S. K. (2003). Social Enterprise: A Typology of the Field Contextualized in Latin America. Retrieved from https://publications.iadb.org/publications/english/ document/Social-Enterprise-A-Typology-of-the-Field -Contextualized-in-Latin-America.pdf Amezcua, A., Grimes, M. G., Bradley, S. W., & Wiklund, J. (2013). Organizational sponsorship and founding environments: A contingency view on the survival of business-incubated firms, 1994–2007. Academy of Management Journal,56(6), 1628–1654. Amezcua, A., Ratinho, T., Plummer, L. A., & Jayamohan, P. (2020). Organizational sponsorship and the economics of place: How regional urbanization and localization shape incubator outcomes. Journal of Business Venturing,35(4), 105967. Arena, M., Bengo, I., Calderini, M., & Chiodo, V. (2018). Unlocking finance for social tech start-ups: Is there a new opportunity space? Technological Forecasting and Social Change,127, 154–165. Aspen Network. (2014). Measuring Value Created by Impact Incubators & Accelerators. Retrieved from https://www.andeglobal.org/ resource/dynamic/blogs/20150609_114557_10161.pdf Austin, J., Stevenson, H., & Wei-Skillern, J. (2012). Social and commercial entrepreneurship: Same, different, or both? Revista de Administração,47(3), 370–384. Autio, E., & Rannikko, H. (2016). Retaining winners: Can policy boost high-growth entrepreneurship? Research Policy,45(1), 42–55. Barney, J. (1991). Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage. Journal of Management,17(1), 99–120. Becker, B., & Gassmann, O. (2006). Gaining leverage effects from knowledge modes within corporate incubators. R&D Management,36(1), 1–16. Bergek, A., & Norrman, C. (2008). Incubator best practice: A framework. Technovation,28(1–2), 20–28. Bioulac, A., Ditsche, J., & Dujacquier, D. (2019). Revising the Market for Innovation: How Accelerators and Incubators can Reinvent Themselves. Retrieved from https://www.rolandberger.com/ publications/publication_pdf/roland_berger_revisiting _the_market_for_innovation.pdf Bleijenbergh, I. (2010). Case selection. In A. Mills, G. Durepos, & E. Wiebe (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Case Study Research (Vol. 2, pp. 61–63). SAGE Publications. Branscomb, L., & Auerswald, P. E. (2002). Between Invention and Innovation - an Analysis of Funding for Early-Stage Technology Development. Retrieved from https://www.nist.gov/system/files/ documents/2017/05/09/gcr02-841.pdf Breivik-Meyer, M. (2020). Organizational sponsorship: An overview of the state of knowledge and future research directions. In A. Novotny, E. Rasmussen, T. Clausen, & J. Wiklund (Eds.), Research Handbook on Start-Up Incubation Ecosystems (pp. 174–193). Edward Elgar Publishing. Breivik-Meyer, M., Arntzen-Nordqvist, M., & Alsos, G. A. (2019). The role of incubator support in new firms accumulation of resources and capabilities. Innovation,22(3), 228–249. Brixy, U., Sternberg, R., & Stüber, H. (2013). Why some nascent entrepreneurs do not seek professional assistance. Applied Economics Letters,20(2), 157–161. Brown, R., & Mawson, S. (2016). Targeted support for high growth firms: Theoretical constraints, unintended consequences and future policy challenges. Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 34(5), 816–836. Bruckschlögl, R. (2019). Bits & Pretzels 2019: „There are Gretas everywhere“. Munich Startup. Retrieved from https://www.munich-startup .de/53289/bits-pretzels-2019-tag-1/ Bruneel, J., Ratinho, T., Clarysse, B., & Groen, A. (2012). The evolution of business incubators: Comparing demand and supply of business incubation services across different incubator generations. Technovation,32(2), 110–121. Carayannis, E. G., & Von Zedtwitz, M. (2005). Architecting gloCal (global–local), real-virtual incubator networks (G-RVINs) as catalysts and accelerators of entrepreneurship in transitioning and developing economies: Lessons learned and best practices from current development and business incubation practices. Technovation, 25(2), 95–110. Casasnovas, G., & Bruno, A. V. (2013). Scaling social ventures. Journal of Management for Global Sustainability,1(2), 173–197. Chan, C. S. R., Patel, P. C., & Phan, P. H. (2020). Do differences among accelerators explain differences in the performance of member ventures? evidence from 117 accelerators in 22 countries. Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal,14(2), 224–239. Chan, K., & Lau, T. (2005). Assessing technology incubator programs in the science park: The good, the bad and the ugly. Technovation,25(10), 1215–1228. Chmiliar, L. (2010). Multiple-case designs. In A. Mills, G. Durepos, & E. Wiebe (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Case Study Research (pp. 582–584). SAGE Publications. Clarysse, B., Wright, M., & Van Hove, J. (2015). A look inside accelerators. Retrieved from https://media.nesta.org.uk/documents/ a_look_inside_accelerators.pdf Clayton, P., Feldman, M., & Lowe, N. (2018). Behind the scenes: Intermediary organizations that facilitate science commercialization through entrepreneurship. Academy of Management Perspectives,32(1), 104– 124. Cohen, S. (2013). What do accelerators do? insights from incubators and angels. Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization,8(3-4), 19–25. Cohen, S., Bingham, C. B., & Hallen, B. L. (2019). The role of accelerator designs in mitigating bounded rationality in new ventures. Administrative Science Quarterly,64(4), 810–854. Cohen, S., Fehder, D. C., Hochberg, Y. V., & Murray, F. (2019). The design of startup accelerators. Research Policy,48(7), 1781–1797. Cohen, S., & Hochberg, Y. V. (2014). Accelerating Startups: The Seed Accelerator Phenomenon. Retrieved from https://papers.ssrn.com/ sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2418000 Colombo, M. G., Rossi-Lamastra, C., & Wright, M. (2018). Chapter 10: Accelerators: insights for a research agenda. In M. Wright & I. Drori (Eds.), Accelerators - successful venture creation and growth (pp. 188– 204). Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. Creswell, J. W. (2014). Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches. SAGE Publications. Crisan, E. L., Salant ,˘ a, I. I., Beleiu, I. N., Bordean, O. N., & Bunduchi, R. (2019). A systematic literature review on accelerators. The Journal of Technology Transfer,46(1), 62–89. Dacin, P. A., Dacin, M. T., & Matear, M. (2010). Social entrepreneurship: Why we don’t need a new theory and how we move forward from here. Academy of Management Perspectives,24(3), 37–57. Dees, J. G. (1998). The Meaning of Social Entrepreneurship. Retrieved from https://centers.fuqua.duke.edu/case/ wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2015/03/Article_Dees _MeaningofSocialEntrepreneurship_2001.pdf Dempwolf, C. S., Auer, J., & D’Ippolito, M. (2014). Innovation Accelerators: Defining Characteristics Among Startup Assistance Organizations. Retrieved from https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/ files/rs425-Innovation-Accelerators-Report-FINAL.pdf Doherty, B., Haugh, H., & Lyon, F. (2014). Social enterprises as hybrid organizations: a review and research agenda. International Journal of Management Reviews,16(4), 417–436. Dooley, L. M. (2002). Case study research and theory building. Advances in Developing Human Resources,4(3), 335-354. Dorado, S., & Ventresca, M. J. (2013). Crescive entrepreneurship in complex social problems: Institutional conditions for entrepreneurial engagement. Journal of Business Venturing,28(12), 69–82. N. Manhart /Junior Management Science 7(2) (2022) 289-337336 Drori, I., & Wright, M. (2018). Chapter 1: Accelerators: Characteristics, trends and the new entrepreneurial ecosystem. In I. Drori & M. Wright (Eds.), Accelerators - successful venture creation and growth (pp. 1–20). Edward Elgar Publishing. DSEM. (2020). Deutscher Social Entrepreneurship Monitor 2019. Retrieved from https://www.send-ev.de/wp-content/uploads/ 2021/03/DSEM2019.pdf Duff, A. (1994). Best Practice in Business Incubator Management. Retrieved from http://docplayer.net/18929817-Best-practice -business-incubator-management-andrew-duff.html Dutt, N., Hawn, O., Vidal, E., Chatterji, A., McGahan, A., & Mitchell, W. (2016). How open system intermediaries address institutional failures: The case of business incubators in emerging-market countries. Academy of Management Journal,59(3), 818–840. Ebrahim, A., & Rangan, V. K. (2014). What impact? a framework for measuring the scale and scope of social performance. California Management Review,56(3), 118–141. Eisenhardt, K. M. (1989). Building theories from case study research. Academy of Management Review,14(4), 532–550. Eisenhardt, K. M., & Graebner, M. E. (2007). Theory building from cases: Opportunities and challenges. Academy of Management Journal, 50(1), 25–32. evers & jung. (2016). Herausforderungen bei der Gründung und Skalierung von Sozialunternehmen. Welche Rahmenbedingungen benötigen Social Entrepreneurs? Retrieved from https:// www.bmwi.de/Redaktion/DE/Publikationen/Studien/ herausforderungen-bei-der-gruendung-und-skalierung -von-sozialunternehmen.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v= 13 Flynn, D. M. (1993a). A critical exploration of sponsorship, infrastructure, and new organizations. Small Business Economics,5(2), 129–156. Flynn, D. M. (1993b). Sponsorship and the survival of new organizations. Journal of Small Business Management,31(1), 51–62. Galbraith, B., McAdam, R., & Cross, S. E. (2019). The evolution of the incubator: Past, present, and future. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management,68(1), 265–271. Germak, A. J., & Robinson, J. A. (2014). Exploring the motivation of nascent social entrepreneurs. Journal of Social Entrepreneurship,5(1), 5–21. Gianoncelli, A., Gaggiotti, G., Miguel, A., & Charro, I. (2020). Enablers of Impact - The Role of Incubators and Accelerators in Bridging Investment and Solutions. Retrieved from https://evpa.eu.com/uploads/publications/EVPA_MAZE -Enablers_of_Impact_report_2020.pdf Global Accelerator Learning Initiative. (2020). The Entrepreneurship Database Program 2019 Data Summary. Retrieved from https:// www.galidata.org/publications/the-entrepreneurship -database-program-2019-data-summary/ Gonzalez-Uribe, J., & Leatherbee, M. (2018). The effects of business accelerators on venture performance: Evidence from start-up chile. The Review of Financial Studies,31(4), 1566–1603. Grant, R. M. (1991). The resource-based theory of competitive advantage: implications for strategy formulation. California management review, 33(3), 114–135. Gupta, P., Chauhan, S., Paul, J., & Jaiswal, M. P. (2020). Social entrepreneurship research: A review and future research agenda. Journal of Business Research,113, 209–229. Hackett, S. M., & Dilts, D. M. (2004). A systematic review of business incubation research. The Journal of Technology Transfer,29(1), 55– 82. Hackett, S. M., & Dilts, D. M. (2008). Inside the black box of business incubation: Study b—scale assessment, model refinement, and incubation outcomes. The Journal of Technology Transfer,33(5), 439–471. Hallen, B. L., Cohen, S. L., & Bingham, C. B. (2020). Do accelerators work? if so, how? Organization Science,31(2), 378–414. Harris, D., & Kor, Y. (2013). The role of human capital in scaling social entrepreneurship. Journal of Management for Global Sustainability, 1(2). Hausberg, J., & Korreck, S. (2017). Mapping the social business incubator landscape. In Paper to be presented at the 1st iese-luiss conference on responsibility, sustainability and social entrepreneurship, rome. Hausberg, J. P., & Korreck, S. (2021). Business incubators and accelerators: a co-citation analysis-based, systematic literature review. Handbook of Research on Business and Technology Incubation and Acceleration. Hochberg, Y. V. (2016). Accelerating entrepreneurs and ecosystems: The seed accelerator model. Innovation policy and the economy,16(1), 25–51. Impact Factory. (2020a). Homepage. Retrieved from https://impact -factory.de/ Impact Factory. (2020b). Impact Factory - Internal Presentation 2020. Inkpen, A. C., & Tsang, E. W. (2005). Social capital, networks, and knowledge transfer. Academy of management review,30(1), 146–165. International Labour Organization. (2020). Sectors Covered. Retrieved from https://www.ilo.org/sector/sectors-covered/ lang--en/index.htm Isabelle, D. (2013). Key factors affecting a technology entrepreneur’s choice of incubator or accelerator. Technology innovation management review, 16–22. Jourdan, J., & Kivleniece, I. (2017). Too much of a good thing? the dual effect of public sponsorship on organizational performance. Academy of Management Journal,60(1), 55–77. Katre, A., & Salipante, P. (2012). Start–up social ventures: Blending fine–grained behaviors from two institutions for entrepreneurial success. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice,36(5), 967–994. King, M. W., Bogusky, A., Krout, T., Schuham, R., Neff, J., Webster, B., & Pintal, C. (2015). Impact Accelerators: Strategic Options for Development and Implementation. Retrieved from https://matthewkingphd.com/wp-content/uploads/ 2016/06/Impact-Accelerators_Strategic_Options_for _Development_and_Implementation_12_30_15.pdf Lall, S. A. (2017). Measuring to improve versus measuring to prove: Understanding the adoption of social performance measurement practices in nascent social enterprises. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations,28(6), 2633–2657. Lall, S. A., Bowles, L., & Baird, R. (2013). Bridging the “pioneer gap”: The role of accelerators in launching high-impact enterprises. Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization,8(3-4), 105–137. Lall, S. A., Chen, L.-W., & Roberts, P. W. (2020). Are we accelerating equity investment into impact-oriented ventures? World Development,131, 104952. Leirich, L. (2020). Das Entscheidungsverhalten von Social Entrepreneurship unterstützenden Organisationen bei der Auswahl von Social Ventures - Eine Untersuchung der Unterstützungslandschaft für Social Entrepreneurship im DACH-Raum (Doctoral Dissertation). Retrieved from https://ubt.opus.hbz-nrw.de/ opus45-ubtr/frontdoor/deliver/index/docId/1466/file/ DissertationLilliLeirich.pdf Mair, J., & Marti, I. (2006). Social entrepreneurship research: A source of explanation, prediction, and delight. Journal of World Business, 41(1), 36–44. Marmer, M., Herrmann, B. L., Dogrultan, E., Berman, R., Eesley, C., & Blank, S. (2011). Startup Genome Report Extra: Premature Scaling. Retrieved from https://integral-entrepreneurship.org/ wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Startup-Genome-Premature -Scaling.pdf McAdam, M., & McAdam, R. (2008). High tech start-ups in University Science Park incubators: The relationship between the start-up’s lifecycle progression and use of the incubator’s resources. Technovation, 28(5), 277–290. Mian, S., Lamine, W., & Fayolle, A. (2016). Technology Business Incubation: An overview of the state of knowledge. Technovation,50-51, 1–12. Miles, M. B., & Huberman, A. M. (1994). Qualitative Data Analysis: An Expanded Sourcebook. SAGE Publications. Miller, P., & Bound, K. (2011). The Startup Factories. Retrieved from https://www.nesta.org.uk/report/the-startup -factories/ Miller, P., & Stacey, J. (2014). Good Incubation - The Craft Of Supporting Early–Stage Social Ventures. Retrieved from https://media.nesta .org.uk/documents/good_incubation_wv.pdf Nicholls, A. (2006). Social Entrepreneurship: New Models of Sustainable Social Change. Oxford University Press. Nicolopoulou, K., Karata¸s-Özkan, M., Vas, C., & Nouman, M. (2017). An incubation perspective on social innovation: the London Hub–a social N. Manhart /Junior Management Science 7(2) (2022) 289-337 337 incubator. R&D Management,47(3), 368–384. Pandey, S., Lall, S. A., Pandey, S. K., & Ahlawat, S. (2017). The appeal of social accelerators: What do social entrepreneurs value? Journal of Social Entrepreneurship,8(1), 88–109. Patton, D., Warren, L., & Bream, D. (2009). Elements that underpin hightech business incubation processes. The Journal of Technology Transfer,34(6), 621–636. Pauwels, C., Clarysse, B., Wright, M., & Van Hove, J. (2016). Understanding a new generation incubation model: The accelerator. Technovation, 50, 13–24. Perrini, F., & Vurro, C. (2006). Social entrepreneurship: Innovation and social change across theory and practice. In Social Entrepreneurship (pp. 57–85). Springer. Radojevich-Kelley, N., & Hoffman, D. L. (2012). Analysis of accelerator companies: An exploratory case study of their programs, processes, and early results. Small Business Institute Journal,8(2), 54–70. Renko, M. (2013). Early challenges of nascent social entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice,37(5), 1045-1069. Rice, M. P. (2002). Co-production of business assistance in business incubators: An exploratory study. Journal of Business Venturing,17(2), 163–187. Roberts, P. W., & Lall, S. A. (2018). Observing Acceleration: Uncovering the Effects of Accelerators on Impact-Oriented Entrepreneurs. Springer. Roche, C. J. (1999). Impact Assessment for Development Agencies: Learning to Value Change. Oxfam. Rothaermel, F. T., & Thursby, M. (2005). University–incubator firm knowledge flows: Assessing their impact on incubator firm performance. Research Policy,34(4), 305–320. Sansone, G., Andreotti, P., Colombelli, A., & Landoni, P. (2020). Are social incubators different from other incubators? Evidence from Italy. Technological Forecasting and Social Change,158, 120132. Santos, F. M. (2012). A positive theory of social entrepreneurship. Journal of Business Ethics,111(3), 335–351. Schwartz, M. (2013). A control group study of incubators’ impact to promote firm survival. The Journal of Technology Transfer,38(3), 302–331. Shankar, R. K., & Clausen, T. H. (2020). Scale quickly or fail fast: An inductive study of acceleration. Technovation,98, 102174. Shieber, J. (2017). Techstars launches an impact accelerator for companies focused on social and environmental impact. TechCrunch. Retrieved from https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/18/techstars -launches-an-impact-accelerator-for-companies-focused -on-social-and-environmental-impact/?guccounter=2 SIM. (2020). Social Innovation Monitor - Full Report on Incubators and Accelerators in Germany. Retrieved from https:// socialinnovationmonitor.com/en/report-incubators/ Smith, S., Hannigan, T., & Gasiorowski, L. (2013). Accelerators and crowdfunding: Complementarity, competition, or convergence in the earliest stages of financing new ventures? In Paper presented at the University of Colorado-Kauffman Foundation Crowd-Funding Conference, Boulder, CO. Smith, S., Hannigan, T., & Gasiorowski, L. (2015). Peering inside: How do peer effects impact entrepreneurial outcomes in accelerators. In Paper presented at the Academy of Management Proceedings. Smith, W. K., & Lewis, M. W. (2011). Toward a theory of paradox: A dynamic equilibrium model of organizing. Academy of Management Review, 36(2), 381–403. Sonne, L. (2012). Innovative initiatives supporting inclusive innovation in India: Social business incubation and micro venture capital. Technological Forecasting and Social Change,79(4), 638–647. Stinchcombe, A. L. (1965). Organizations and Social Structure. In J. March (Ed.), Handbook of Organizations (pp. 153–193). Rand McNally. Stokan, E., Thompson, L., & Mahu, R. J. (2015). Testing the differential effect of business incubators on firm growth. Economic Development Quarterly,29(4), 317–327. Suchman, M. C. (1995). Managing legitimacy: Strategic and institutional approaches. Academy of Management Review,20(3), 571–610. Tracy, S. J. (2010). Qualitative quality: Eight “big-tent” criteria for excellent qualitative research. Qualitative Inquiry,16(10), 837–851. Triebel, C., Schikora, C., Graske, R., & Sopper, S. (2018). Failure in startup companies: why failure is a part of founding. In Strategies in Failure Management. Springer. Van Weele, M., van Rijnsoever, F. J., & Nauta, F. (2017). You can’t always get what you want: How entrepreneur’s perceived resource needs affect the incubator’s assertiveness. Technovation,59, 18–33. Vanderstraeten, J., van Witteloostuijn, A., & Matthyssens, P. (2020). Organizational sponsorship and service co-development: A contingency view on service co-development directiveness of business incubators. Technovation,98, 102154. Ventures, P. (2020). What is Steward-Ownership? Retrieved from https:// purpose-economy.org/en/whats-steward-ownership/ Wernerfelt, B. (1984). A resource-based view of the firm. Strategic Management Journal,5(2), 171–180. Wilkinson, C. (2015). A Map of Social Enterprises and Their Eco-Systems in Europe - Synthesis Report. Retrieved from http://apfse.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/ 5.Synthesis-report-FINAL.pdf Wilson, F., & Post, J. E. (2013). Business models for people, planet (& profits): Exploring the phenomena of social business, a market-based approach to social value creation. Small Business Economics,40(3), 715–737. Wise, S., & Valliere, D. (2014). The impact on management experience on the performance of start-ups within accelerators. The Journal of Private Equity,18(1), 9–19. Yang, S., Kher, R., & Newbert, S. L. (2020). What signals matter for social startups? it depends: The influence of gender role congruity on social impact accelerator selection decisions. Journal of Business Venturing,35(2), 105932. Yin, R. K. (2003). Case Study Research: Design and Methods. SAGE Publications. Yu, S. (2020). How do accelerators impact the performance of hightechnology ventures? Management Science,66(2). Zahra, S. A., Gedajlovic, E., Neubaum, D. O., & Shulman, J. M. (2009). A typology of social entrepreneurs: Motives, search processes and ethical challenges. Journal of Business Venturing,24(5), 519–532. Zimmer, K., & Pearson, K. (2019). This is what is still holding social entrepreneurs back. Retrieved from https:// www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/07/this-is-what-holds -social-entrepreneurs-back/ Zimmerman, M. A., & Zeitz, G. J. (2002). Beyond survival: Achieving new venture growth by building legitimacy. Academy of Management Review,27(3), 414–431.