Women in innovation: Challenges and opportunities

• Main Author: JIN, Mengzi
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2019
• Subjects: Gender; Diversity; Innovation; Creativity; Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Ethnicity in Communication; Technology and Innovation
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/etd_coll/201; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1201&context=etd_coll
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Innovation and creativity are the engines of social and economic progress. What roles do women play in innovation? Emerging evidence reveals that fewer women than men enter and succeed in innovation-related fields. Tackling gender inequality at work has always been one of the grand societal challenges, however little is known about gender issues specific to innovation achievements. This dissertation attempts to explain gender gaps in the innovation and creativity context. Innovation typically involves generating multiple novel and useful ideas, selecting the most promising one for implementation, and persistently championing the idea through implementation. I theorize and unpack the gender effect situated in different stages of innovation, specifically in idea selection and idea championing. I propose that although women are equally capable as men in generating highly novel ideas, there is greater “novelty avoidance” in women than men - the extent to which individuals refrain from pursuing the most novel ideas they have generated. In a series of studies designed to feature the innovation process (Studies 1-3), I showed the differential influence of gender on idea generation and idea selection. Furthermore, I tested three alternative explanations to the gender difference in novelty avoidance tendency, namely, risk aversion, interdependent self-construal, and fear of social backlash associated with novelty (Study 2). Results suggest that fear of social backlash associated with novelty explains the gendered novelty avoiding/seeking tendencies. I also proposed and showed that the gender difference in novelty avoidance tendency was alleviated when women were told that their innovation will be judged by other women (Study 3). For idea championing (Studies 4-6), I theorize that women employees are less likely than their men colleagues to engage in autonomous idea championing - bypassing norms, rules, and established procedures to promote creative ideas. Drawing on the “creative prototype model”, I further theorized and showed that the more men employees autonomously champion their creative ideas, the more their supervisors perceived them as creative. In contrast, when women employees engaged in autonomous championing behaviors, they faced backlashes, especially from their women supervisors. I conclude by discussing the implications of these findings and future research to help advance current understanding of the challenges and opportunities that surround women innovators.