Scouting of eearly-stage start-ups: Development and initial test of a conceptual framework
Roland Heinz, Yannic Stephan, Herbert Gillig · 2017
For accelerators, investors and innovative companies, scouting of early-stage start-ups is a most important activity to initiate business deals as investments and partnerships. We therefore executed eight semi-structured expert interviews and an online-survey (n=31) to allow us to propose a new conceptual scouting framework. The framework consists of seven activity fields which can be grouped into three levels — execution level, management level and ambassador level. To prove the functionality of the conceptual scouting framework, we tested the management level in practice by applying it to a partnership programme. In this programme, a start-up accelerator and a corporate venture capitalist from the field of additive manufacturing/3D-printing closely collaborate in order to qualify new ways of deal sourcing.