## 2 Theoretical Framework
### The Accelerator Ecosystem in Europe
For example, in the case of the United Kingdom, only 135 accelerator programmes appeared in F6S, while 238 appeared in Crunchbase. This is possibly due to F6S being a social network, in which the accelerators themselves register in the network, while in Crunchbase, it is the company itself that searches for and includes the accelerators in its databases. When we studied the data in detail, we also observed that sometimes the accelerator programmes are confused with accelerators, resulting in an overestimation of the number of accelerators or an underestimation of the number of programmes. Similarly, we detected accelerators that were inactive but were listed in the databases as active. Despite the effort we made to identify and filter these cases, it is possible that the data still include some accelerators that are technically no longer operational. Once the data were filtered, we further focused the study on the 10 EU countries with the highest GDP and the UK and obtained the following general conclusions (see Table 2):  
1. There is no direct correlation between the number of accelerators in a country and its GDP. For example, Spain has a high number of accelerator programmes compared to some larger countries, such as France and Italy. 2. Most accelerators in the EU are cross-sectoral and when there is a specific focus, it is usually based on the application of technologies in a given sector, such as Fintech, Agritech, Edtech, Cybersecurity or Smart cities. 3. In the UK and France, most accelerators are concentrated in their capital cities, while in other countries (e.g., Spain and Sweden), programmes tend to be more distributed across the territory, although still anchored to large cities. 4. Most of the accelerators focus on the following fields: Fintech, Agritech, Edtech, Cybersecurity or Smart cities. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c} \hline
**Country** & **F6S** & **Crunchbase** & **Country** & **F6S** & **Crunchbase** \\ \hline Austria & 7 & 14 & Italy & 58 & 58 \\ Belgium & 41 & 25 & Latvia & 2 & 3 \\ Bulgaria & 11 & 4 & Lithuania & 3 & 9 \\ Czech Republic & 5 & 7 & The Netherlands & 31 & 54 \\ Croatia & 5 & 3 & Malta & 3 & 0 \\ Cyprus & 4 & 2 & Poland & 12 & 19 \\ Denmark & 7 & 16 & Portugal & 22 & 37 \\ Estonia & 12 & 10 & Romania & 24 & 13 \\ Finland & 13 & 23 & Slovakia & 1 & 5 \\ France & 47 & 87 & Slovenia & 4 & 3 \\ Germany & 84 & 113 & Spain & 57 & 103 \\ Greece & 9 & 5 & Sweden & 11 & 17 \\ Hungary & 12 & 14 & Luxembourg & 4 & 6 \\ Ireland & 11 & 26 & UK & 135 & 238 \\ \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 1: Main European Hubs ranked by number of start-ups accelerators programmes. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c c c c} \hline
**Concept** & **DE** & **UK** & **FR** & **IT** & **ES** & **NL** & **PL** & **SE** & **BE** & **IE** \\ \hline Total GDP (USD billion) & 4223.11 & 3186.85 & 2937.47 & 2099.88 & 1425.28 & 1018 & 674.08 & 627.43 & 599.87 & 498.55 \\ Population & 83.129 & 67.326 & 67.499 & 59.066 & 47.326 & 17.533 & 37.781 & 10.415 & 11.59 & 5.028 \\ (M people) & 50,801 & 47,334 & 43,518 & 35,551 & 30,115 & 58,061 & 17,840 & 60,239 & 51,767 & 99,152 \\ \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 2: Top ten European countries ranking by total GDP (2022 estimation).