We are delighted to announce the first academic article written by Marco Lamas, Carina Cerqueira and Slava Baranovskiy about Eligent Club's Accelerator Programme: "Interculturality role in startups internationalization: Eligent Club’s virtual Accelerator Programme case".

Eligent Club's Accelerator Programme started in 2019 was one of the first fully virtual programmes in Europe that aimed to help early-stage startups from all across Europe to bring their businesses to international markets.

During Covid-crisis it became obvious that virtual forms of startup support programmes are crucial for the survival of startups in such unpredicting times.
The topic raised in this paper is the interculturality role for international development and startup expansion. This publication may be useful for entrepreneurs, academics, startup founders and startup industry professionals.

Thank you to our Eligent Club Ambassadors, Mentors and Partners.

Welcome to read it: eligent.club/interculturality-role

Abstract: This article focuses on entrepreneurship, in particular startups and the emerging need they have to go international since its creation or shortly thereafter. Only in this way will they be able to guarantee their survival and achieve the necessary scalability to grow rapidly across new markets acting globally. There are several barriers in an internationalization process, such as language and culture, and as a result, reaching and creating a worth-lasting effective business relationship it's a hard task to undertake, therefore we will address interculturality and its fundamental role in the process. Finally, we address Eligent Club, its origin and development since its creation, its role in supporting startups acting as facilitator, providing access to international opportunities beneficial to both global and local economies, namely international projects, partners, academics, experts, and investors. We will approach in detail, Eligent Accelerator 2 Program case, a virtual program that fits the reality of the ongoing and increasing, business digital transformation movement we are living in the middle of the COVID-19 Pandemic but will certainly fit also the period that will follow it. With the virtual accelerator programs being recent, their advantages will be highlighted, as well as the many challenges they face.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Interculturality; Internationalization; Startup; Virtual Accelerator.