Business accelerator programs as external facilitators of startup internationalization

Abstract

Startups have become increasingly important for the economy as employers and boosters of vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystems. The most significant startups to the economy are the ones that are growth-oriented. Growth-oriented startups tend to operate in knowledge-intensive fields of business, especially in high-tech, and are active in innovation. Especially in Finland where the domestic market is small, growth-oriented startups need to pursue internationalization in order to survive and grow, despite their limited resources and experience. Because of their limited resources, startups are relatively vulnerable in their internationalization process and to compensate the lack of resources, startups need to find partners with complementary resources. External facilitators such as business incubators and accelerators can respond to the support needs of startups pursuing internationalization. The purpose of this study is to find out how startups perceive business accelerators as external facilitators of internationalization. The main question was further divided into two subquestions: • What are startup expectations of business accelerators as facilitators of internationalization? • What are startup experiences of business accelerators as facilitators of internationalization? For the purpose of this qualitative study startups that had taken part in business accelerator program and the accelerator program representative were interviewed. In order to validate the results of the study, validating questions were sent to some startups that had taken part in the accelerator program. The results of the study indicate that the business accelerators can facilitate internationalization of startups in many way. It was observed that the most significant factors facilitiating startup internationalization are skills that the accelerator can teach to startups, other complementary resources, such as access to accelerator networks, increased future expectations, that encourage startups to pursue internationalization and global mindset, that contributes to performance success in international markets. It should be noticed that these factors provided by business accelerator programs supporting startup internationalization are not necessarilly the ones that the startups would need to support their internationalization, but the ones that were observed to be the most significant from this particular business accelerator program offering. In order for the business accelerators and other external facilitators to best facilitate startup internationalization, the individual startup needs should be diagnosed during the program and already in during the application process.