Barriers, Challenges, and Benefits: Gender Diversity in Technology-Based New Venture Team Innovation

Abstract

This paper introduces the early phase of research designed to unpack the phenomenon of gender diversity intechnology new venture teams including its barriers, potential benefits, and challenges. We present some preliminary casestudy findings from 13 interviews with team members from three technology new ventures in Indonesia. This researchsetting allows us to investigate a unique cultural context in a developing country. The present study addresses a significantresearch gap by elucidating various viewpoints of new ventures towards gender diversity within the same institutionalcontext, thereby enabling a nuanced understanding of their ability to leverage the potential benefits of gender-diverse teamsfor innovation. Specifically, our findings reveal that new ventures have different abilities to navigate the barriers andchallenges associated with gender diversity. This study identified three distinct barriers, namely the acquisition of genderbalancedapplicants, the mitigation of gender-specific bias, and the effective management of dynamics team composition.In addition to the potential benefits of having a gender-diverse team, such as enhanced collaboration, balanced thinking,and inter-group competition, our research has identified three significant challenges. These include the need to overcomecultural and social norms that hinder gender diversity, effectively managing diversity management practices, and improvingemployee engagement and a sense of belonging. The initial results of our study offer some practical and theoreticalimplications for enhancing the potential of new ventures to leverage the advantages of gender-diverse teams to promoteinnovation. These we aim to study further as the doctoral investigation advances further through more extensive case studyanalysis.