Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to raise awareness of conflicts between the innovation ideologies fundamental to entrepreneurial theory and the exclusivity embedded in the discipline’s research and discursive practices.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper draws upon entrepreneurship and critical theory literature to deconstruct some embedded assumptions inhibiting the participation of women as entrepreneurs.
Findings
The underrepresentation of female and minority entrepreneurs has been examined most often by researchers from the perspective of trying to discover and overcome barriers to participation, rather than seeking to understand why and how these barriers are created and sustained. The paper identifies processes contributing to the construction of obstacles inhibiting inclusivity and proposes that conscientious implementation of practices such as critical reflexivity can limit their reproduction.
Research limitations/implications
By situating critical theory and reflexivity as key practices for cultivating diversity and innovation in entrepreneurship, this paper offers a useful basis for expanding subsequent research and pedagogical practices representative of a wider variety of populations and activities.
Practical implications
Entrepreneurship is key to job creation and economic growth. Rigid conceptualizations of entrepreneurship and unexamined biases of scholars and educators limit the accessibility of research and constrain students’ entrepreneurial intentions and behaviors.
Originality/value
The paper fills a gap in the literature by exploring disciplinary practices that cultivate and sustain gender exclusivity. It provides a structured approach to understanding discrepancies between the innovation entrepreneurship idealizes and the practices that confine participation to specific populations and economic practices.
Evaluating the impact of entrepreneurship education is difficult given the heterogeneity of programming which presents challenges related to the generalizability of findings. The National Science Foundation’s Innovation-Corps (I-Corps) program, which incentivizes academic researchers to explore the commercialization potential of their research, offers a unique opportunity to examine the outcomes of entrepreneurship and technology commercialization training from an educational perspective given its standardization across populations and settings. We used the four-level Kirkpatrick Model for evaluating the impact of training and education programs to examine faculty experiences with I-Corps in depth. Using a qualitative inquiry methodology, we conducted 26 interviews with faculty innovators across three large public research institutions. Findings revealed that faculty had positive impressions of the program overall and attributed specific knowledge gains to participation. They also described behavioral changes impacting both their research and teaching. However, participants also identified challenges with I-Corps pedagogy and identified opportunities to improve training. This program evaluation and description of specific learning outcomes (skills, knowledge, attitude, and behaviors) contributes to best practices associated with delivering technology commercialization and entrepreneurship training to academic researchers.
Research on gender inequalities in entrepreneurship focuses more often on identifying or overcoming existing barriers rather than examining how stereotypical gendered beliefs and characterizations are created or maintained in the first place. We argue that the media provides a contextualized and sociocultural perspective into the gendering of entrepreneurship. Using a novel multimethod approach based on media framing analysis, we examine the content and social interactions portrayed during the first season of the reality television program Shark Tank to deconstruct the processes that normalize and reinforce gendered stereotypes and inequalities.
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