The corporate cooperativeness with start-ups across development stages: a risk assessment in acceleration programs

The purpose of the article is to find out whether corporations differ in their readiness to cooperate with start-ups at three stages of their development (ideation, growth, scaling) in the context of assessing relevant risk factors. The research was based on a descriptive statistical analysis of CAWI survey data on a sample of 101 start-ups within one of ten Polish start-up sectors. These start-ups have been involved in corporate acceleration programs in line with a model of consortium accelerator. The results of this research allow us to conclude that the success of such cooperation is influenced by their ability to manage risks throughout the mentioned stages of start-up’s development. This article contributes to identifying and describing a number of risks that can be distinguished in such cooperation under the acceleration program. Additionally, different types of risks are highlighted in different stages of start-up corporation cooperation leading to different kinds and levels of cooperativeness (readiness to cooperate) between sides leading to the final success of the collaborative project.