Business Incubation versus Business Accelerator

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Business incubators tend to be associated with creating environments for ideas to develop into cohesive essentially to finish the core concepts around which an idea started.

Business accelerators tend to be associated with an existing idea ready to be monetized and requiring more of the business nurturing techniques in support of the idea.

In both instances investors are involved, although as you can imagine the amount of risk-taking is seemingly less with the process of acceleration versus the process of incubation.

What are the merits of both approaches given the above descriptions?

Business Incubation
Business Accelerator
Startup Development
Sandy Waters
67 months ago

2 answers

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In my experience, business incubators tend to be centered around a certain industry (vertical), solution topic/function, technology or other innovation. Sometimes, the incubator has a primary (or a few) main sponsors or ecosystem pillar (e.g. Google, Salesforce, IBM, Cisco, Amex...).

Accelerators have been more general, around fueling start-ups through the process from initial idea to beyond the 2nd round of venture funding (roughly). Accelerators are often paired with a methodology, funding or mentoring partner (Techstars, for example)

Michael Franken
66 months ago
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Business incubation is bringing an early-stage idea (technology, service, etc) to life by scaling up the technology, finding clients and applications and coming up with a business proposition that could be brought to market. Business acceleration takes place when there is a sellable product/service and the sales is being expanded (more customers, geographies etc). There are companies who specialize in each of the area and also might have a business vertical focus. There are also venture builders who come along the whole journey from incubation to expansion via IPO/acquisition. Partners have to evaluate their common vision, expectation and where they help each other on the journey.

Andre Stolz
66 months ago

Have some input?