Female Inventors and Inventions

Rembrand  Koning; Sampsa  Samila; John-Paul  Ferguson

Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2019

Female Inventors and Inventions

by Rembrand Koning, Sampsa Samila and John-Paul Ferguson

Abstract

Has the increase in female medical researchers led to more medical advances for women? In this paper, we investigate if the gender of inventors shapes their types of inventions. Using data on the universe of U.S. biomedical patents, we find that patents with women inventors are significantly more likely to focus on female diseases and conditions. Consistent with the idea of women researchers choosing to innovate for women, we find stronger effects when the lead inventor on the patent is a woman. Women-led research teams are 26% more likely to focus on female health outcomes. This link between the gender focus of the scientist and the type of invention, in combination with the rise of women inventors, appears to have influenced the direction of innovation over the last four decades. Our findings suggest that the demography of inventors matters not just for who invents but also for what is invented.

Keywords: innovation; Biomedical Research; Innovation and Invention; Diversity; Gender; Research; Health; United States;

Language: English

Format: Print

45 pages

SSRN Read Now

Citation:

Koning, Rembrand, Sampsa Samila, and John-Paul Ferguson. "Female Inventors and Inventions." Working Paper. (SSRN Working Paper Series, No. 3401889, June 2019.)

When do conversations lead people to generate better ideas? We conducted a field experiment at a startup boot camp to evaluate the impact of informal conversations on the quality of product ideas generated by participants. Specifically, we examine how the personality of an innovator (openness to experience, capturing creativity) and the personalities of her randomly assigned conversational peers (extroversion, measuring willingness to share information) affects the innovator's ideas. We find that open innovators who spoke with extroverted peers generated significantly better ideas than others at the boot camp. However, closed individuals produced mediocre ideas regardless of the individuals they interviewed, suggesting limited benefits of conversations for these people. More surprisingly, open individuals, who are believed to be inherently creative, produced worse ideas after they spoke with introverted peers, suggesting individual creativity's dependence on external information. Our study demonstrates the importance of considering the traits of both innovators and their conversational peers in predicting who will generate the best ideas.

We conduct a field experiment at an entrepreneurship bootcamp to investigate whether interaction with proximate peers shapes a nascent startup team's performance. We find that teams whose members lack prior ties to others at the bootcamp experience peer effects that influence the quality of their product prototypes. A one-standard-deviation increase in the performance of proximate teams is related to a two-thirds standard-deviation improvement for a focal team. In contrast, we find that teams whose members have many prior ties interact less frequently with proximate peers, and thus their performance is unaffected by nearby teams. Our findings highlight how prior social connections, which are often a source of knowledge and influence, can limit new interactions and thus the ability of organizations to leverage peer effects to improve the performance of their members.

Working Paper | 2019

The Value of Communication: Evidence from a Field Experiment with Entrepreneurs in Togo

Stefan Dimitriadis and Rembrand Koning

Why do some entrepreneurs benefit from their portfolio of peer advisers while others do not? In this study, we argue that communication practices are an important but overlooked factor in the formation of useful advice relationships between entrepreneurs, particularly in the context of developing economies. We hypothesize that improving entrepreneurs’ communication practices will affect the relationships they form and have implications for their business performance. To test our theory, we conducted a field experiment in Togo with 301 entrepreneurs who were randomized into a communication practices intervention that was embedded in a business training program. We found that entrepreneurs who were exposed to better communication practices perceived interactions more cooperatively and exchanged more information during those interactions. Moreover, improving communication practices also led to a 50 percent increase in the number of relationships entrepreneurs formed with peers. These relationships exhibited more matching based on skill and were more ethnically diverse. Finally, communication practices training also substantially increased entrepreneurs’ business performance. Our findings highlight how communication practices play a central role in entrepreneurs’ ability to form portfolios of relationships and perform in challenging business environments.

Keywords: communication practices; business relationships; Entrepreneurship; Communication; Developing Countries and Economies; Africa; Togo;

Citation:

Dimitriadis, Stefan, and Rembrand Koning. "The Value of Communication: Evidence from a Field Experiment with Entrepreneurs in Togo." SSRN Working Paper Series, No. 3459643, September 2019. View Details

Cite View Details Read Now