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This book summarizes five years of learning from data collected as part of the Global Accelerator Learning Initiative. The authors present data describing impact-oriented ventures and accelerators that operate in both high-income countries and in emerging markets. Blending survey data with insights from sector experts, their various analyses shed light on the basic structure of accelerators, showing where they are having their most promising results. Unlike previous studies, this book does not focus on a few high-profile accelerators (like TechStars and Y Combinator) and startups (like AirBnB and Uber). Instead, it compares a range of accelerator programs that target specific impact areas, challenging regions, and marginalized entrepreneurs. Therefore, it serves as a valuable tool for scholars, policymakers, and practitioners interested in the effectiveness of accelerator programs as tools that unleash the economic potential currently trapped in entrepreneurial dead spaces.

This paper presents a theory of how new organizational forms penetrate local populations. We theorize that founders with pre-founding industry experience in non-local populations are more likely to adopt locally novel forms. Pre-founding experience within local and non-local industry populations should also allow organizations to reach larger size and produce superior quality products, both of which contribute to the persistence of the novel organizational form. We evaluate these predictions in an analysis of the transformation of the population of Israeli wineries between 1983 and 2004, when five existing organizations witnessed the arrival of 138 new wineries. This explosion in numbers coincided with a shift from kosher toward non-kosher wine production, the new organizational form. Although the four largest Israeli wineries in 1982 were kosher, roughly 75 percent of the new entrants were established as non-kosher producers. We analyze how founders' pre-founding experiences helped the novel non-kosher form penetrate the local population. The results show that non-local wine industry experience prior to founding increased the odds that a new entrant would select the non-kosher organizational form. At the same time, both local and non-local pre-founding experience improved the size and product-quality outcomes achieved by the non-kosher entrants. This had an additional effect on form penetration by improving the impact and longevity of the novel-form producers.

This study examines the adoption of new products and processes in the Australian retail banking industry over the 1981 to 1995 period. Our analysis demonstrates that the vast majority of observed innovative activity was based on ideas sourced from outside the focal firm, and that innovations diffused very quickly across competing banks. As such, there were no periods during which any bank had proprietary possession of a major product or process innovation. We therefore ask how the banks' innovative activity could affect their relative financial performance positions. We answer this question by developing a set of hypotheses that relate specific features of their histories of innovative activity to their current financial performance. These hypotheses are tested using a detailed data set describing 1,297 modifications made to products and services, distribution technologies, and back-office processes within a sample of Australian retail banks over the sample period. Our results provide support for the general position that establishing an attractive competitive position depends on the specific history of a firm's innovative activity. Banks that undertook more innovative activity, that were more consistent in that activity, and whose composition of activity was somewhat differentiated from the industry norm tended to display superior financial performance. Rather than looking solely for internally generated, inimitable innovations to deliver competitive advantage, these results suggest that active and consistent innovative activity that is somewhat differentiated from competitors can also deliver superior financial performance.

"Providing students and practitioners with a detailed overview of the key theoretical and applied issues, this book is a comprehensive and integrated primer on regeneration. The various chapters: review the history and context of urban regeneration; consider funding implications; look at environmental, social and community issues, as well as employment, education and training; focus on managing urban regeneration; consider land use issues; and discuss monitoring and evaluation. The book concludes with a comparative analysis, with examples from America and Europe, and a discussion of future trends. The book represents the first systematic overview of urban regeneration in one volume and is set to become the standard reference."--Publisher.

We examine changes in the effectiveness of local civic action in relation to changes over time in racial diversity and income inequality. Local civic action comprises situations in which community members come together—typically with support from local organizations—to address common issues. The collective orientation of local civic action makes it sensitive to changes in local social conditions. As these changes unfold, local organizations become differentially able to support civic action. Here, our core argument features the process through which community members associate with different local organizations and how mandated versus voluntary association results in distinct responses to increased social and economic heterogeneity. We test this argument using three decades of data describing local campaigns of the annual Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF program. A baseline model shows that within-county increases in racial diversity and income inequality are associated with diminished campaign effectiveness. Subsequent models that separate out campaigns organized by schools, churches, and clubs show that schools are relatively more effective mobilizers as racial diversity and income inequality increase, arguably due to the greater demographic matching that is induced by mandated school participation.