Cultivating outside-out open innovation: How a corporate accelerator orchestrates its ecosystem

The outside-out mode of open innovation (OI) has recently been conceptualized to emphasize the influence of ecosystems on innovation outcomes. However, the impact of ecosystems on this emerging mode remains poorly understood, and the constituents, including underlying mechanisms, actors, practices, and actual outcomes of outside-out OI require further exploration. Adopting an in-depth case study approach, this paper investigates outside-out OI within an ecosystem centered around a corporate accelerator (CA). The study reveals how a CA constructs its ecosystem and demonstrates the five key orchestration mechanisms of outside-out OI: co-designing, co-selecting, co-accelerating, co-investing, and reconciling . It also identifies three distinctive practices of co-acceleration: startup matchmaking, business pivoting, and product validation . The study further advances the conceptualization of the outside-out mode by examining its benefits for different ecosystem actors. Finally, it identifies a new role in the CA context, a pathfinder that plays a critical role in the implementation of the outside-out mode by navigating, connecting, and inspiring startups . By linking ecosystem literature with OI literature, we demonstrate the influence of ecosystems on innovation outcomes and how a CA orchestrates outside-out knowledge flows within its ecosystem.