CORPORATE INCUBATORS & ACCELERATORS

SEEDING THE FUTURE OF YOUR BUSINESS

Over the past twenty years, it has become increasingly common for businesses to turn to private corporate incubators and accelerators to help them launch radical new business ideas they would otherwise never consider.   Such venues and programs give them a "safe sandbox" in which to play, letting them entertain novel new technologies, offerings, and business models that significantly depart from how they currently do business... concepts they would never, ever have considered from the established and entrenched halls of their business.

Given these mechanisms, businesses can now explore all manner of experimental concepts, each spun-out with their own charter, management team, and executional style – for the greatest possible chance of success.   Some of these experiments will fail, but some will also succeed, and a few will very likely succeed wildly.   It is these concepts that quite literally lay the foundation for a whole new generation of the business, ensuring its long-term resilience in a sea of otherwise fly-by-night operations.

But today there are a wide variety of incubator and accelerator types from which to choose, and establishing and operating these venues and programs is no longer the simple and straightforward task that it once was.   With incubators, there are private incubators, joint & partnered incubators, university alliances, and more.   With accelerators, there are captive accelerators, sponsored accelerators, public accelerator partnerships, and more.   The choices and their implications are incredibly broad, which can make trying to get such an effort launched and off the ground extremely daunting.   Those who opt to go it alone face an incredibly steep learning curve with numerous hurdles and stumbles along the way.   Which is why many so many opt instead to engage with an experienced partner that knows how to lead them through the process, safely navigating the choices and decisions that have to be made, and arriving at the desired end goal far faster and with far fewer mistakes than they would otherwise.

THE ENGAGEMENT

The Corporate Incubator / Accelerator Engagement typically follows these steps:

1. We begin by listening to you so as to understand your goals for launching an incubator and/or accelerator program.
2. We then coach you through the many different types of incubators and accelerators and the pros and cons of each one.
3. We next explore with you how any one of these may or may not fit with your current organization and its goals, and thereafter help you to select the most appropriate entity for the business.   This would be the entity that is most likely to produce the types of outcomes and impacts your business seeks.
4. Once that choice has been made, we then work with you to plan out the design and launch of the entity, defining the specific roles, structures, processes, governance, investments, and reinforcements needed for it to thrive, as well as whatever partnerships will be needed for its ecosystem.
5. As desired, we hit the ground running with you to help you actually build, launch, and begin operating this entity.   By working side-by-side in this manner, we are able to impart the operating know-how your team needs in the fastest and most effective way possible.   When the appropriate time comes, we gradually disengage and let your leaders take over full operation of the entity.
6. As needed, we can also deliver custom training and workshops around incubators and accelerators so as to build awareness and understanding of these within the business.   It is not uncommon for this to be a part of the implementation effort.
7. As desired, we can be retained to serve as long-term advisors to the entity and to its cohorts of spin-outs.