Characteristics and Specificities of Local Innovation Accelerators: A Case of Poland

Accelerators are one of the most recent and prominent institutions that support start-up development. The phenomenon of accelerators impacts academia as well as policy makers and practitioners. However, the research on accelerators is still very scant and the majority of research concerns the most prestigious and successful American accelerators. The purpose of this paper is to outline the characteristics of Polish accelerators and their specificities, with the focus on the differences between public and private accelerators. The collateral aim of the authors was to describe characteristics and components of an innovation accelerator and its placement in the ecosystem of institutional support for start-ups. The first part of the study focuses on the definition of an accelerator, the review of relevant literature and the differences between other well established institutions such as incubators and business angels. The second part of the study presents the current state of accelerators in Poland. It is observed that the majority of the accelerators in Poland are publicly funded and accelerators avoid taking equity in accelerated start-ups. This is an effect of the competition from public accelerators, which offer a sizable equity-free grant of 200,000 PLN. This study enriches the research on different models of local accelerators and their acceleration programs.