TenU Hosts Women in Innovation: key insights

Last year, a European report on venture capital funding announced that women-founded start-ups generated more revenue per Euro invested. The difference is significant: women-founded start-ups outperformed men-led business by 96 per cent, nearly twice the capital productivity. Yet of all companies that received investment, only 1 per cent were of all-women-founded companies, while 94 per cent were of all-male-founded teams. Could the low prevalence of women VC partners—7 per cent—be at the root of this strong bias? Why is that so and how can we change that? What are people doing already that we can learn from?

TenU member Lesley Millar-Nicholson, Executive Director of the MIT Technology Licensing Office, chaired a panel of distinguished speakers featuring Almesha Campbell, AUTM Chair-Elect and Assistant Vice President for Research and Economic Development at Jackson State University; Anne Lane, TenU member and CEO of UCL Business; Fiona Murray, Professor of Entrepreneurship & Associate Dean of Innovation at MIT Sloan School of Management; Gaele Lalahy, Chief Operating Officer of Balance-App, and Maina Bhaman, Partner at Sofinnova Partners.

The lively discussion offered many thought-provoking insights of which five key insights are outlined below.

1.     Representation matters

Fiona Murray opened the event by highlighting some inherent biases in the treatment given to men and women in innovation. Examples included men being asked more often to join scientific advisory committees; men’s voices believed to be ‘more investable’ than women’s; men being asked in funding pitches what they can achieve, while women are asked what could go wrong.

Murray therefore called for a conscious effort to shift perceptions on men’s and women’s abilities. She proposed simple gestures such as using pictures of women in innovation settings when advertising an article, call or invitation: Murray cited research that showed that while women are more likely to engage with such an advert, it makes no difference to men’s engagement.

Anne Lane and Maina Bhaman seconded that. Both celebrated the fact that diversity had increased significantly since they started their careers in science, innovation and investment. As well as campaigning for more diversity and building diverse teams, they both found that seeing greater diversity at the top definitely helped to bring more diverse job-seekers into their fields. As Lesley Millar-Nicholson put it: ‘you need to see yourself in the places you want to be and encourage others to achieve that place’.

2.     Men need to join the conversation and be part of the change

All agreed that diversifying the innovation sector should not be led by women only. Almesha Campbell made a persuasive call for men to become involved in these efforts too: ‘we should aim for a system where everyone helps each other, where work-life balance matters both to men and women, and where the responsibilities at work and home are shared’.

Campbell thus proposed engaging men in mentoring women, as well as men, and engaging both in recognising potential biases. For example, Murray described research showing that male mentors are more likely to introduce male mentees to their networks than female mentees, and while the bias was reversed in female mentors, female mentors introduced much less overall. The end-result is that whether mentored by male or female mentors, female mentees are introduced less than male mentees. Rather than women avoiding male mentors then, what was needed, according to Campbell, was a mixed-gender conversation about the role of mentorship.

3.     Investing time and resources in diversifying networks broadens the pool of excellence

Panellists expressed some ambivalence when it came to quotas. All agreed that ultimately, they wanted the best people on the job, regardless of gender or other diversity markers. However, in order to have a wide range of choice in the selection of candidates, Murray recommended diversifying the selection pool and acknowledging that this can take some time and effort, including making adjustments to job descriptions and advertising materials, promoting more widely, working with agencies, and offer accessibility measures. Also important, when selecting the best candidates is to set up mechanisms that reduce potential bias, deliberate or unconscious, at the point of interviewing and making final decisions.

4.     Collecting data is key to exposing patterns and encourage behaviour change

All panellists agreed that collecting data was key. This included data on diversity in the selection process, about an organisation’s workforce at every level, and about the wider network, be it of mentors, contractors, suppliers and investors. Data had the power of exposing potential blind-spots and systemic patterns, whether positive or less so.

Gaele Lalahy is a strong advocate of data collection, having had insight into the challenges of women with menopause through Balance, the app she manages. While menopause is a still little-talked about subject, its effects are striking: 12 per cent of women resign at the height of their careers, 18 per cent ask to work less hours to accommodate symptoms and 21 per cent don’t ask for promotions because they are overwhelmed with symptoms. The loss to the economy is significant and could be exposed further by collecting data. Apart from helping raise awareness of the issue through data collection, Balance also offers a great example of femtech designed to empower women by informing themselves about the menopause and encouraging them to seek the right help.

Anne Lane and Maina Bhaman also collect data as part of their daily operational work-related routines. Lane, for example, asks partners, contractors and suppliers about their diversity and inclusion policy. In so doing, she signals that it is important to UCLB to have one in place, giving her the opportunity to make inclusive decisions when it comes to choosing who to work with. Similarly, Bhaman encourages founders to engage diverse leadership teams, similarly signalling that it is important to think about diversity to receive investment.

5.     Barriers are multi-faceted – but the number of solutions is growing and having an impact

Overall, the event exposed the variety of barriers that women still face in the workplace. These include, but are not limited to, early expectations about male and female disciplinary subjects, expectations about childcare and housework responsibilities, biases at interview and funding stage, and health barriers at every step of the way.

But the event also showed that there is increasing awareness of these barriers, growing engagement in efforts to overcome these, and so plenty of reasons to be positive about the future of women in innovation.

TenU Hosts is a series of events offering opportunities for US and UK policymakers, thought leaders and leading practitioners to hold topical conversations in research commercialisation. The next TenU Hosts event will be held in the autumn; if you wish to be informed of the date, contact us to join our mailing list.

TenU is an international collaboration formed to capture effective practices in research commercialisation and share these with UK and US governments and higher education communities, in order to increase the societal impact of research. TenU’s members are the technology transfer offices of the University of Cambridge, Columbia University, University of Edinburgh, Imperial College London, KU Leuven, University of Manchester, MIT, University of Oxford, Stanford University, and UCL.