Sheryl Winston Smith

Giones Valls, Ferran; Shankar, Raj K., Smith, Sheryl Winston, Garcia-Herrera, Cristobal & Timmermans, Bram (2024)

Introduction to special issue on corporate and startup collaborations in an age of disruption: looking beyond the dyad

Industry and Innovation, 31(5), s. 533- 543. Doi: 10.1080/13662716.2024.2346315

Established organisations and new ventures search for knowledge in the face of disruption. The activation of corporate-startup collaborations facilitates access to new and complementary knowledge. This type of collaboration has become increasingly popular as a corporate response to technological and market disruptions. However, there is growing evidence of the multiplicity of outcomes, intrinsically related to the broad diversity of forms and collaboration models. In this special issue, we include five contributions that give an overview of the phenomenon. We explore theoretical lenses that help us understand the potential tensions emerging from asymmetrical inter-organisational collaborations and possible solutions to make those collaborations successful. We delineate the theoretical and practical contributions of the papers and summarise the research opportunities that emerge around a phenomenon that keeps evolving.

Smith, Sheryl Winston; Garcia Herrera, Cristobal, thiel, jana, Perkmann, Markus & Giones, Ferran (2023)

Corporate, Industrial And Wicked Acceleration: Tackling Grand Challenges Through Novel Approaches

Academy of Management Proceedings, 2023(1) Doi: 24 Jul 2023https://doi.org/10.5465/AMPROC.2023.18912symposium

Entrepreneurial ventures drive disruptive innovation and industrial change in many industries, requiring deft responses and anticipatory innovation from corporates. A burgeoning approach by which incumbent firms can react to or potentially tap into entrepreneurial ventures’ innovative potential is through Corporate Accelerator Programs (CAP). Yet, many CAPs fail, and extant research provides limited understanding of how incumbents can effectively harness innovation through these novel corporate-start-up engagements that go beyond traditional approaches like acquisitions and alliances. This panel symposium will highlight the ongoing state of research on distinct types of accelerators (with a focus on corporate-backed ones), the current tools deployed for experimentation and scaling as well as their shortcomings to address disruption and wicked problems across industries. We will extend our understanding of different acceleration modalities, including corporate accelerators, industrial consortia, moonshot, and wicked acceleration, and suggest ways for developing new and existing theories using the CAP context. Our panel of leading scholars and practitioners will share their views on how innovation and entrepreneurship theory relate to CAPs, how CAPs are distinct from conventional approaches to firm innovation and industrial change, and how academic research can contribute to a better design, management, and impact of CAPs in the face of disruption and grand challenges. This panel symposium builds on the prior successful AoM Annual Meeting Symposium, with new and returning panelists, industry practitioners, and cutting-edge research. This distinctive panel symposium will be of great interest to the STR, TIM and ENT Divisions.

Smith, Sheryl Winston; Giones, Ferran, Krishnan Shankar, Raj, Perkmann, Markus, Garcia Herrera, Cristobal, thiel, jana, basu, sandip & vandeweghe, laurens (2022)

Corporate, Consortia & Moonshot Acceleration: Novel Approaches to Speed Up Entrepreneurial Innovation

Academy of Management Proceedings

Smith, Sheryl Winston (2023)

Peering Inside: Peer Effects, Knowledge & New Venture Outcomes

[Academic lecture]. Nordic Conference on Entrepreneurship Research (NCER).

Startups balance simultaneous pressures to learn and evolve while differentiating themselves from similar firms competing for resources. A growing literature on “peer effects” points to the salience of learning from the combined experience of similar individuals. Given the lasting impact of founding conditions, we ask: To what extent are founding teams and startups shaped by peer experience? We posit that the collaborative microcosm of the cohort experience in accelerators amplifies transmission of peer learning but also increases competition. We leverage a novel, hand-collected dataset on founding teams, startups, and cohorts in accelerators to answer this question. We observe differences in exit and funding outcomes as a function of different types of experience: founding teams with prior scientific backgrounds are more likely to exit via quitting; those with prior coding experience are more likely to exit via acquisitions; and those with prior entrepreneurial or managerial experience are more likely to receive VC funding. We find that the relative similarity between the prior experience of the founding team and the distribution of prior experience within the cohort amplify both learning and competition.

Smith, Sheryl Winston (2023)

Management Schools in Europe - How are they different?

[Academic lecture]. Strategy Science Conference.

Smith, Sheryl Winston (2023)

Spanning Two Worlds? Corporate Accelerators & CVC Innovation Portfolios

[Academic lecture]. Strategy Science Conference.

Smith, Sheryl Winston (2023)

Peering Inside: Peer Effects, Knowledge & New Venture Outcomes

[Academic lecture]. Academy of Management, Entrepreneurship Division Mid-Winter Meeting, Toronto, 2023.

Startups balance simultaneous pressures to learn and evolve while differentiating themselves from similar firms competing for resources. A growing literature on “peer effects” points to the salience of learning from the combined experience of similar individuals. Given the lasting impact of founding conditions, we ask: To what extent are founding teams and startups shaped by peer experience? We posit that the collaborative microcosm of the cohort experience in accelerators amplifies transmission of peer learning but also increases competition. We leverage a novel, hand-collected dataset on founding teams, startups, and cohorts in accelerators to answer this question. We observe differences in exit and funding outcomes as a function of different types of experience: founding teams with prior scientific backgrounds are more likely to exit via quitting; those with prior coding experience are more likely to exit via acquisitions; and those with prior entrepreneurial or managerial experience are more likely to receive VC funding. We find that the relative similarity between the prior experience of the founding team and the distribution of prior experience within the cohort amplify both learning and competition.

Luzzi, Alessandra & Smith, Sheryl Winston (2023)

Scaling Social-Business Hybrids: A Multiple Case Study on the Role of Learning

[Academic lecture]. EGOS Colloquium.