Book of the Week – Entrepreneurial Ecosystems: A Gender Perspective

Curious to learn more about how gender inequalities affect women entrepreneurs and the systems they inhabit? Look no further than “Entrepreneurial Ecosystems: A Gender Perspective” from Banu Ozkazanc-Pan, Ph.D. and Susan Clark Muntean, Ph.D. Together, the researchers break down how gender inequity alters the entire business landscape.

What is Entrepreneurial Ecosystems about?

Based on extensive fieldwork, this book demonstrates how gender is an organizing principle of entrepreneurial ecosystems. It shows how gender makes a difference in how ecosystem resources are assembled and how they can be accessed. By bringing visibility to how ecosystem actors are heterogeneous across identities, interactions and experiences, the book highlights the role and complexity of the individual, organizational and institutional factors working in concert to create and maintain gendered inequities.

Entrepreneurial Ecosystems provides research-driven insights around effective organizational practices and policies aimed at remedying gendered and intersectional inequalities associated with entrepreneurship activities and economic growth. It proposes a typology of four ecosystem identities. Through this, it highlights how some might be more amenable and organized towards gender inclusion and change, while others may be much more difficult to change, reorganize and restructure.

Topics include:

1. Gender and entrepreneurship
2. Building inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystems
3. Understanding drivers of inclusion and exclusion at the individual, organizational and institutional level

Why should people read Entrepreneurial Ecosystems? Who is the book for?

This book offers scholars, students, practitioners and policymakers insights about gender in relation to analyzing entrepreneurial ecosystems. It discusses the fostering of inclusive economic development policies. The book is targeted at anyone who wants to help dismantle the gender inequities in entrepreneurial ecosystems. If you want to learn more about these issues, you’ll find value in the book.

Single most important takeaway:

“Building inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystems requires intentionality, leadership and a keen understanding of the intersecting individual, organizational and institutional forces at play.”

Meet the authors

Banu Ozkazanc-Pan, Ph.D. is a Professor of Practice in Engineering and Founder and Director of the Venture Capital Inclusion Lab at Brown University. Ozkazanc-Pan is co-editor-in-chief of Gender, Work & Organization. Her research on entrepreneurial ecosystems has been awarded grants from The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and INBIA/JP Morgan Chase. Recently, she testified at the US Senate Committee on Small Business & Entrepreneurship. She spoke about the importance of women and minority investors and entrepreneurs. She is a member of CNBC’s Disruptor fifty Advisory Council, a global group of fifty-five leading thinkers in the field of innovation and entrepreneurship.

Susan Clark Muntean, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Management at the University of North Carolina, Asheville. Her research strives to improve our understanding of entrepreneurial support organizations, entrepreneurial ecosystems and corporate and family business, particularly with respect to governance, inclusion, politics and gender equality. Recognitions for this research include a grant award from The Kauffman Foundation, the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship’s (‘USASBE’) best paper in entrepreneurship and ethics award in 2017, USASBE’s best paper in family business honorable mention in 2014 and best paper in women’s entrepreneurship at the International Council for Small Business in 2011.

For more on gender inequalities and how they affect women entrepreneurs, click here!