Agenda: Accelerators

Accelerators are a critical sector within the entrepreneurial
ecosystem. Sometimes described as “incubators on steroids”,
they prepare startups for growth and funding, develop more
sophisticated founder capabilities such as negotiating skills,
innovation commercialisation and venture capital readiness.
Accelerators play a unique value-creation role in the ecosystem -
a role that is often not visible or well understood. Their linkages
to the national innovation system, the higher education sector
and industry value chains require them to have specialist
expertise, with more customed and finely-tuned business
development services.