## 2 Theoretical Framework
### The Accelerator Ecosystem in Europe  
It is not easy to find reliable data on start-up accelerators in Europe that would allow us to obtain an up-to-date and accurate picture of the current ecosystem. One of the first efforts to map accelerators in Europe was carried out by [PERSON] for the European Commission in 2012 [29], who identified 16 unique accelerator brands across the European Union, some of which had a presence in more than one country, resulting in a total of 39 accelerators. Most of these were to be found in London, Berlin and Dublin, and the remainder in Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Paris, Tallinn and Helsinki. The same study also identified other emerging cities where new accelerators were being set up: Bucharest, Riga, Barcelona, Madrid, Lisbon and Zurich. Shortly afterwards, Telefonica carried out another study [30] with a similar objective, to obtain as complete a picture as possible of the different entrepreneurial ecosystems in Europe. To this end, they mapped the accelerators, incubators and company builders of the seven largest countries in the European Union (Germany, France, United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Sweden) by Gross Domestic Product (GDP). According to the study, which covered the period between 2007 and 2013, the number of accelerators and incubators in Europe had grown by nearly 400%, reaching a number of programmes per capita that was very similar to that of the United States. In 10 EU countries with a combined population of c.361 million, 260 accelerator programmes were identified, while the USA with a population of c.316 million, had 200 programmes. The following year, 2014, marked a turning point in European policy on the start-up ecosystem, with the launch of the Startup Europe (SE) programme, launched under the European Commission's Horizon 2020 EU Research and Innovation programme [31]. Six European projects were funded (Digistart, Welcome, eplus, Startup Scaleup, Twist and Startup Europe Partnership), involving approximately 700 European start-ups. The SE mission was to connect stakeholders of local start-up ecosystems in EU member countries, including entrepreneurs, start-ups, researchers, investors, mentors, local authorities and also accelerators. Under this initiative, a European network of accelerators was also created under the name of Accelerators Assembly. One of its first actions was to obtain a map of European accelerators based on the data collected by SeeD-DB [32]. The study concluded that the overall European accelerator ecosystem consisted of some 57 accelerators that had already graduated 738 start-ups. More recently, the Global Accelerator Learning Initiative [33] conducted a similar study, but with a global scope based on data collected during the period 2013-2019. For this, accelerators were initially identified through internet searches, as well as by consulting various secondary sources such as Crunchbase, Seed-BD, Nesta, Global Accelerator Network and F6S. Subsequently, the veracity of the data was verified through interviews with the heads of the accelerators or by reviewing their websites. Finally, a global map was obtained showing that some 72 accelerators were deployed in Europe, compared to 101 in the USA and Canada, 49 in South Asia, 35 in East Asia and the Pacific, 41 in the Middle East and Africa and 33 in Latin America. In line with this, the authors of [34] studied the relationship existing between the level of economic development (considering the global competitiveness index and the gross domestic product per capita growth) of each of the 27 EU countries with the performance of their entrepreneurial activity. To update and complete the previous studies, we have used a similar technique and created our own map from the data available on Crunchbase and F6S. To do so, we checked the activity of the accelerators through their websites and social networks. The UK was also included in the study due to its relevance in the European start-up ecosystem. As can be seen in Table 1, the data vary according to the source used.