Cornelius Maas

• Firms‘ resource base is one of the determinants of their capacity to innovate. When firms’ internal base of financial, intangible or technical resources is not sufficient to realize innovation projects, resources provided by other stakeholders can mitigate innovation constraints. This cumulative dissertation intends to shed light on innovation-related collaborations and interactions of three specific kinds of actors. The first article investigates the role innovation plays for investors when screening and evaluating potential investment targets and explains to which extent the investors’ behavior re-orients towards the implementation of innovation-pushing measures once being invested. Also, the second article refers to the interaction between investors and innovative firms: Subsequent to a derivation of an industry-specific business model pattern, the second article analyzes whether and how financing of new and innovative digital health ventures differ between Europe and USA. Adopting a single case study approach, the third article focuses on the interaction between corporate accelerators and innovative firms and identifies shortcomings of Telefonica’s corporate accelerator Wayra.