Recent Research: Gender differences in motivations for academic entrepreneurship
Since the inception of I-Corps, only 20% of participants have been women, according to the 2023 National Science Foundation I-Corps biennial program report. A recent paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, titled Gender Diversity in Academic Entrepreneurship: Social Impact Motives and the NSF I-Corps Program examined this gender gap by investigating how social impact and commercial motives influence engagement in the NSF I-Corps program.
The researchers used a multi-pronged approach to gather data on entrepreneurial motivations and behaviors. First, they surveyed participants at a local I-Corps site between Fall 2018 and Spring 2022 to assess their entrepreneurial intentions. To incorporate a bigger-picture perspective, the team then analyzed 1,267 national I-Corps project abstracts from 2012-2019. Their analysis of the project abstracts revealed that women principal investigators (PIs) tended to emphasize social impact more in their project descriptions compared to men. Notably, the study found no significant difference in how men and women described the commercial potential of their projects, suggesting that emphasizing social impact does not preclude meeting the program’s commercial requirements.
To test the practical implications of these findings, the researchers conducted an email experiment at the local I-Corps site over three cycles between Fall 2018 to June 2019. They sent out two versions of recruitment emails to nearly 10,000 graduate students and faculty in the host university’s STEM departments: one emphasizing social impact and another focusing on traditional commercial aspects. The results showed that women were 4.1% more likely to open emails with a social impact framing compared to men. Additionally, they found no significant difference in engagement between men and women after opening the email (i.e., clicking links or completing an expression of interest form), suggesting that initial framing plays an important role in determining who “comes to the door” to take advantage of these opportunities.
NSF biennial report on I-Corps also provides additional context for these findings. Female participation in I-Corps increased by 25% in the 2021-2022 program year compared to the previous period, which, NSF observes, coincides with the program’s shift to a remote format and an elimination of travel requirements for training and customer discovery interviews. NSF indicates in the report that they are likely to continue the remote format.
These insights suggest potential low-cost interventions to boost gender diversity in entrepreneurship and commercialization activities. They challenge program designers and policymakers to rethink not just how they communicate opportunities, but how they structure programs to align with diverse motivations and constraints.
This article was prepared by SSTI using Federal funds under award ED22HDQ3070129 from the Economic Development Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce. The statements, findings, conclusions, and recommendations are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Economic Development Administration or the U.S. Department of Commerce.
entrepreneurship, nsf