AoM Symposium: Who Benefits from Which Intermediary Organizations: Accelerators, Coworking Spaces, and Makerspaces (apologies for cross-listing)
Program Session: 1642 | Submission: 16430 | Sponsor(s): (ENT, STR, TIM)
Scheduled: Tuesday, Aug 8 2023 8:00AM - 9:30AM ET (UTC-4) at Boston Hynes Convention Center in Room 107
A large extant literature has historically established the importance of various intermediaries in promoting entrepreneurship, such as government agencies, science parks, and various university and public educational programs. Recently, scholars have paid close attention to a prominent type of entrepreneurial intermediary organizations-accelerators-that have catered to high-growth startups, as a range of high-profile entrepreneurial successes have emerged from their programs, e.g., Dropbox, AirBnB, Stripe, Postmates, DoorDash, etc. At the same time, other types of burgeoning intermediary organizations that are not specifically designed for entrepreneurs have also cultivated notable cases of well-known startups. On one hand, coworking spaces-subscription-based workspaces in which individuals and teams from different companies work in a shared, communal space-have sparked the successes of Instagram, Uber, Spotify, etc. On the other hand, makerspaces-physical spaces that provide fabrication tools and materials for making things-have allowed ventures like Square, PebbleTec, and URB-E to produce their initial prototypes for achieving later commercialization. Consequently, scholars, practitioners, and policymakers all endeavor to understand whether these successes from the various intermediary organizations can be replicated broadly and how.
This symposium aims to spark conversations between scholars studying different types of intermediary organizations that can facilitate entrepreneurship. The four papers altogether allow for the possibility of exploring the question of who benefits from which intermediary organizations by integrating perspectives from accelerators, coworking spaces, and makerspaces. Through highlighting the distinctive mechanisms at play in different intermediaries, the presentations provide new insights into (1) the boundary conditions of the efficacy of accelerators and (2) how coworking spaces and makerspaces may disproportionately benefit certain types of entrepreneurship, e.g., minority and social entrepreneurship.
Organizer: Jiayi Bao, Texas A&M University
Discussant: Charles (Chuck) Eesley, Stanford University
Presenter: Valentina Assenova, University of Pennsylvania
Presenter: Sandy Yu, University of Minnesota
Presenter: Travis Howell, Arizona State University
Presenter: Jiayi Bao, Texas A&M University
We look forward to seeing you there!
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Jiayi Bao
Assistant Professor
Mays Business School
Texas A&M University
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