Dominik K. Kanbach

• This publication-based dissertation covers research on corporate venturing activities of established companies over six chapters. The first chapter provides an introduction into corporate venturing and a summary of the four research papers comprising this dissertation. The second chapter is a structured literature review analyzing the heterogeneity inherent in corporate venturing activities. The characteristics that differentiate corporate venturing activities from each other are comprehensively identified, and a framework that integrates existing activities into six clusters is derived. The third chapter is a research paper that explores a recent corporate venturing activity – namely corporate accelerators – in depth. This empirical study, based on 13 case studies, identifies the objectives pursued with these programs and its design configurations and derives four common types of corporate accelerators. The fourth chapter is a research paper that analyzes empirically entrepreneurial start-ups as knowledge sources for established companies in the context of corporate accelerators and incubators. The paper identifies knowledge need, knowledge forms, and knowledge exchange as knowledge elements in these programs. Based on the comparative analysis of 12 case studies, typical combinations of the knowledge elements are found. The fifth chapter is a teaching case study building on the decision of Media-Saturn-Holding, Europe´s leading consumer electronics retailer, to develop the company´s own corporate accelerator program called SPACELAB. The sixth chapter summarizes the contributions of this dissertation for research and practice as well as its limitations and potential directions for further research.