The pursuit of new opportunities is at the heart of entrepreneurship. Creating the organizational environment to recognize and seize such opportunities is fundamental to entrepreneurial success and yet, the relationship between organizational design and entrepreneurship has received limited attention. Drawing on extant research in the fields of corporate venturing, technology business incubation, organizational design and governance, this dissertation addresses these research gaps by presenting four studies. The first relies on abductive reasoning to develop a conceptual framework for typologizing the design of the heterogeneous accelerator phenomenon. The second study empirically develops an organizational design typology of various corporate accelerator archetypes, as a key mechanism for the process of technology business incubation and corporate venturing. It further highlights how corporate accelerator design evolved over time. The third study addresses organizational decision systems and specifically, the role of the board of directors in young, entrepreneurial ventures. The fourth study presents a case study and teaching note exploring how to design an entrepreneurial organization and sustain its flexibility, adaptability and entrepreneurial DNA over the long term. In sum, this dissertation contributes to the field of entrepreneurship by extending prevailing knowledge on the why, how, and what of corporate accelerators, new venture boards and the organizational design behind such entrepreneurial entities.

Innovation, digitalization, technology disruption, fast to market are commonly used terms in the technology industry. However, in today’s world, these terms are used to define the state of art of the automotive industry. The onset of innovative vehicle models and the technology-driven vehicle manufacturing in the automotive industry offers many opportunities and an equivalent amount of challenges. Therefore, how an organization reacts to the ongoing technology discontinuities and how an organization transforms its business model to adapt to the changes to sustain in the industry are becoming significant factors in evaluating its strategic value and determining its success. This doctoral research titled ‘Technology-Based Transformation in Automotive Supply Chain – Role of Organizational Development aims to investigate the critical factors of technology-based transformation in the automotive industry using the automotive supply chain as the research set-up to demonstrate the ongoing transformation. This doctoral research further strives to conceptualize an organizational development framework that seamlessly enables organizations to manage technology-based transformation.