The industrial PhD programme and initiation of the research project

The field study of the dissertation is carried out under the setting of the Danish Industrial PhD programme, which funds collaborative research closely linked to practice, with the aim of collaborative research with both academic and practitioner value and impact. An industrial PhD project is conducted in collaboration between an Industrial PhD fellow, a university and a private company. The private company apply for subsidies for financing part of the researcher’s salary from the Danish Agency of Science, Technology and Innovation, and the researcher is formally employed by the company, but also given access to the necessary facilities at the university. The researcher has to divide her time 50/50 between the company and the university and fulfil explicit requirements for both institutions. The industrial PhD differs from the university PhD by not having a teaching obligation but a communication obligation to the host company. The research conditions of the

industrial PhD offers privileged access as an insider to the empirical field (Van de Ven 2007), but there are also challenges in the role as employed researcher related to the organisation under investigation (Alvesson 2003, 2009) as discussed later in this chapter.

The collaborative partners of this project are Symbion A/S and Copenhagen Business School. In 2009 CEO Peter Torstensen and Professor Mette Mønsted met at conference at Symbion and shared an enthusiasm for the research opportunities of Symbion’s Accelerator programme. The ambition of the programme was to create a truly new and professional offer to highly potential entrepreneurs, and the programme structure gave extraordinary opportunities for following incubation impact and entrepreneurial learning processes in real time.

Professor Mette Mønsted arranged for a meeting at Symbion between the CEO of Symbion and me, as the researcher. It was a relatively short meeting in which many perspectives was touched upon, but the main conclusion was an agreement of pursuing a research project application for the industrial PhD programme with the overall theme of; Looking for growth. The application was approved in Marts 2010.

The following quote is from the initial meeting in the beginning of 2010 with the CEO of Symbion. It indicates that many of the unanswered questions about the in-betweens of entrepreneurship support in research are a puzzle to practitioners as well. The task he had in mind for me was to study and document the effects of the incubating activities, and in an almost existential question for the programme, he asked,

‘Does it make a difference – and what is it we do that works? What does it mean to develop small companies – What works – Why does it not work? What does timing mean, and which elements increase the likelihood of success – and what is that?’ (My notes from the meeting).

These questions suggest the many unknown elements of the incubating process that the programme manager was working within, and which he would like my research to explore. At the time, I did not know how essential these questions are to incubating processes as a field of practice and as a field of research.

Before I turn to the design and methodological considerations of the field study I introduce the Accelerator Programme, which has been the centre of the fieldwork and common denominator for all conversations performed in the field by the researcher together with actors of the field.

4.7. The Accelerator programme: content, process and actors 4.7.1. Description of the accelerator programme²³

‘We support start-ups who have a unique product or service and the ambition to take their business further.

We spot, train and fund start up talents to help them develop faster and cheaper. And we work dedicatedly to share and enhance our own knowledge on entrepreneurship and business development. We believe that entrepreneurship can be taught and learned²⁴. Some lucky few just happen to be in the right place at the right time, but most successful start-ups have worked hard for their success’ (Webpage of the programme 2014)

The business accelerator programme, which serves as the empirical field of the dissertation is hosted and performed by a science park in Copenhagen, Denmark. The programme is funded by the Danish Government and EU funds, but the science park is involved in a wide variety of incubating initiatives that are funded by both private and public institutions. The incubator programme is a 5-month intensive go-to-market programme that runs twice a year with a class of 15 high-growth entrepreneuring ventures. The programme explicitly claims to be an elite programme for the best start-up ventures in Denmark. The empirical material covers venturing participants from all over Denmark. During my fieldwork period the programme expanded to other parts of the country, establishing local versions of programme.

The programme consists of five main components. These are presented in the Programme Book as follows:

• A series of camps headed by international experts. These offer the companies insights into key methods and tools and force them to work specifically with the core of their business.

• A coach model to compensate for a lack of resources and ensure that the input from the camps is translated into real action

23During the three-year fieldwork period, various elements of the programme content changed, as did the wording and descriptions of the programme. This means that the different participants and advisors have not been part of completely the same processes. During the fieldwork, I participated in and contributed to a number of programme alterations, evaluations, changes and new strategies for programme content. One advisor mentioned that he had seen more than 51 PowerPoint versions of the programme within the first three years! With regard to the research question, this does not change the possibilities for inquiring into the relational constructions of ventures – or the lack of them – that may lead to some kind of entrepreneurial capacity for acting entrepreneurially, which is the basic elements of interactions. No matter the design of the programme, there are still interactions to investigate.

24 The word learned is used here in the 2014 description of the programme. The word learning as well as action learning methods increasingly became part of the rhetoric of the programme actors, during my fieldwork period.

Nevertheless, as I discuss in chapter 5 it is my claim that the sociological, educational and relational prerequisites of learning were still not part of the actual programme practice. The same goes for the use of the terms network and network model which the field talk in an entitative, instrumental language, as something that can be found out there, added on or handed over.

• A network model where each venture links up with experts who have insights into markets and customers that will bring new knowledge to the process in order to test hypotheses and assumptions

• An interactive model for customer dialogue and markets testing to ensure that the companies’

assumptions are constantly tested on real customers and potential partners

• An investment possibility. The programme also includes a pre-seed fund that participants can apply to after graduation. The max investment is a loan of EUR 400,000.

In academic terms the programme can be described as a virtual incubator focussing on tech-based growth ventures, with the ambition of turning entrepreneuring projects into exportable commercial ventures with no demand for the venture to be physically located at the science park site (Lewis et al. 2011). The programme interaction is designed as a close collaboration between the participating venture and an assigned advisor, which can includes coaching and professional guidance and introduction to models of business planning, marketing, customer insights, and sales on a weekly basis. The business assistance can be categorised as strong intervention (Bergek and Norrman 2008), as the incubating process is guided carefully by the advisor, follows a plan and has milestones and stage gates. Part of the incubating process is also to go beyond the incubator borders to interact with partners, customers, industry experts, suppliers etc., and the programme may act as the facilitator of such activities (Peters et al. 2004).

Camps often run as 2-5-day introductions to themes such as value proposition, pitching, Lean Start-Up, Business models, Crossing the Chasm and other related entrepreneurship literature themes. Entrepreneurship hotshot presenters, primarily from the United States, facilitate these camps, which aim to add a sense of professionalism and legitimacy to the programme and attract the best entrepreneuring ventures of Denmark.

4.7.2. The selection process of the Accelerator Programme

As a potential candidate for the programme, venturing actors must apply through an online form by a certain deadline. Once the deadline for a given period has passed, the programme manager and the advisors meet and score the applicants on a five-point scale on measures such as time-to-market, product differentiation, scalability, need for funding and management competencies. It is obviously difficult to determine these criteria, and that is also why other signs of future prosperity and quality such as team composition, previous performance, previous experience and references are more or less explicitly taken into account. In many ways these ‘other signifiers’ are relational (in-between) matters, indicating how relationally competent and well connected to other (successful) actors the venture is.

Some of the applicants have been contacted by the programme and encouraged to apply, and some have met or talked with advisors about the programme and their venture before they apply. This means that it varies how much information the programme team has about the individual ventures when making the

recommendation for Selection Camp. For some of the applicants, it is a huge burden to fill out the application form, while others have no problems with this task. The applicants who receive the highest score are invited to present their case at Selection Camp for the Selection Board members. Typically 25-30 ventures are invited to pitch their case, and why they should be accepted into the programme.

Selection Camp is held twice annually and is organised by industry; thus, ventures in the IT field present their case to board members who have some industry-specific knowledge about their case. The selection procedure is that the applicant has 15 minutes to present his or her case, and afterwards the board has 5 minutes for follow-up questions. The candidate leaves the room, and each board member says ‘yes,’ ‘no’ or

‘maybe’; these verdicts are collected by one of the programme advisors. Then the next applicant is invited to the stage. Once all the applicants have presented their case, the team members and programme management collect all the votes and decide which 15 to invite for Kick-Off Camp. Thus, although the board members lend their expertise and legitimacy to the selection process, the power of selecting whom to accept is still very much in the hands of the Accelerator Programme team. As it was described to me by one advisor;

“You have to remember that besides the `objective` evaluation of the product potential, it is also crucial that we have a feeling of being able to work with team and contribute with the stuff we do” (Fieldnotes from Selection Camp)

The board members are representatives of the Danish Venture Capital industry and organisational partners of the programme. Most of the board members have some form of entrepreneurial background, they have invested personally in entrepreneurial start-ups, and they act as both advisors and investors for their respective organisations. The accelerator programme puts considerable effort and resources into making the selection process legitimate and ‘professional’, both as a means of attracting potential ventures and as a way of making up for the ambiguous measures of performance. The process is constructed to justify selection and investment in the companies and bring prestige to the selected companies, who are to feel part of the few selected who are worthy of investing in.

4.7.3. Characteristics of entrepreneurial actors and their entrepreneurial venture/project The incubator participants are small technology-based projects or start-ups between the proof-of-concept and proof-of-market phase. Few are already on the market, hoping to become the next Danish gazelle venture.

The programme aims only to take in companies with a finished product/ service that is ready for big-scale

commercialisation, but it has proven difficult, based on the selection process, to evaluate how far along participants are in having proof-of-concept, a customer base etc. Various actor-network studies have shown that technology is as an independent actor in processes of entrepreneurial becoming and is as hard to predict and control as the social actors (Korsgaard 2011, 665). The majority of the participants have at least three years of university education, and even though the ventures included in the programme are technology-based many of the participants have some kind of business experience or education as well. Technology-based entrepreneurs are sometimes described in the techno-entrepreneurship and related incubation literature as nerdy engineers or biochemists with no interest in the real world (Roberts 1991, Prodan 2007). The respondents included in the empirical material cannot be stereotyped as such but form a much more heterogeneous group. Some of the technologies have participated in incubating activities, advice situations, pitch camps or competitions before, and the same goes for the entrepreneurial actors; this means that some participating actors know the game of incubating activities, speak the language and know what to expect. Most are, however, new to this kind of support and are less familiar with the language and what to expect. The participants in the programme are predominantly male and in the 25 to 55-year age span. Three of the 39 interviewed participants were women.

4.7.4. Characteristics of the advisors and partners of the programme

At the time of my arrival at the science park, the programme team consisted of eight advisors, one Industrial PhD and one programme manager²⁵. Most team members were ambitious and successful individuals in their early thirties with an international outreach and no significant entrepreneurial experience. The programme also had more experienced advisors attached who were not in the office on a daily basis, and who mainly offered specific industry expertise. The working language of the programme and at the office was English; this aimed to signal an international outlook and to prepare the participants for taking their venture abroad. The working language was changed to Danish after the first year of my employment, at which time the team underwent a substantial expansion, several team members left, and all the members of the new team were native Danish-speakers. One experience from the early phase of the programme was that it was difficult to get experienced entrepreneurs attached to the entrepreneuring ventures as advisors on a daily basis, and that these experienced entrepreneurs were not willing to put in enough hours as mentors for the companies, which was part of the original programme philosophy. The programme manager had therefore chosen a team that consisted mainly of younger, high-performing consultants – wearing black suits and with generic competences to work with the companies. Few of the consultants had previous experience from start-ups and certain key

25 The programme also had a Biotech part, but the activities and consultants were located elsewhere in Copenhagen

industries. From my early fieldwork is listened to an underlying discussion at the office and in the context of the programme - about the importance and use of generic skills versus industry expertise and experience. During the time of my fieldwork, the team of advisors and incubator managers has been very dynamic, and the make-up of the advisors’ team has become more diverse with a stronger presence of advisors with specific industry experience, established networks and experience with founding their own companies - but with less focus on international outreach and international network.

The Accelerator programme has several partners from the Danish Incubation industry, as already described in chapter 3, ranging from university based innovation environments to ministries of business and education and the private investor industry. In addition the programme draws upon a network of external entrepreneurship teachers/ scholars and hot shot entrepreneurship-savvy people that are used for camps and other events.

Through the large Danish network and many events of the programme, I have had the opportunity to meet, interview, observe, visit and to a smaller degree interact with many of these actors of the incubation industry.

This has been an important source of getting to hear more and different stories of the field and regard the fieldwork as reaching beyond the programme as a single-case study, but as an organizational ethnography study of the Accelerator programme and its context.