Selective Startups: The importance of partnering experience on new ventures’ learning outcomes from collaboration with established ventures

Abstract

The blue economy has been recognized for its potential to meet future requirements and represent immense opportunities for economic growth, employment and sustainable development. Emerging ocean industries are particularly expecting significant economic growth in the years to come, due to powerful incentives to innovate. Uncertainty in the regulatory and emerging environment, as well as urgent need for innovations that can replace current unsustainable solutions, causes industry players to increasingly seek collaboration with external partners. To meet requirements for future industrial sustainability, collaboration between new and established ventures may pose unique opportunities to increase its potential. For a collaboration to be successful, both parties should be committed, but this has been deemed challenging due to their diverse capabilities and structures. Efficient coordination and management of inter-organizational learning in partnerships is thus needed for collaboration to truly impact the sustainability of an industry. Accelerator programs are a solution for new ventures to connect with relevant industry ecosystems, including established ventures. These introductions might be crucial to create maximum value of collaboration, due to their ability to decrease challenges related to resource limitations, which otherwise would be difficult to achieve value from new ventures’ sustainable ideas. By participating, they are building possibilities for themselves that could form future collaborations that may not have happened without the learning outcomes from an accelerator program. The defined research questions are explained below.