Seminar – Overcoming the Liability of Gender: Collaboration Networks and Entrepreneurial Patenting by Garage Inventors

Dr Michelle Rogan, Kenan-Flagler Business School

What roles do collaboration networks play in explaining gender differences in entrepreneurial entry? Are network effects gender symmetric or asymmetric?

The research investigates these questions by comparing rates of entrepreneurial patenting in a matched sample of male and female “garage inventors”, observing inventors’ patenting and collaboration networks from their first independent patents to their first entrepreneurial patents (new patents with newly formed firms).

The rate of entrepreneurial patenting by female inventors is significantly increased when they have been collaborating in larger inventive teams, larger inventive networks or mixed gender teams.

Further analysis shows that of these effects, team size and network size are gender symmetric, increasing rates of entrepreneurial patenting in the same way for men and women. However, the mixed gender team effect is asymmetric, increasing rates for women but decreasing rates for men. Although developing broader networks is important for women, working on mixed gender teams may provide them with a unique advantage.

The study also points to the need for additional research into the asymmetry of network effects on entrepreneurship.

Speaker bio

Dr Michelle Rogan’s research centers on corporate entrepreneurship. She focuses on acquisitions of social capital, such as how firms use acquisitions of target firms to gain valuable inter-organisational relationships to customers, suppliers and other business partners in the advertising industry.

She is investigating the effect of competition among clients of advertising firms on the formation of new advertising agencies both within and outside of existing advertising holding companies. In the consulting industry, Dr Rogan is exploring how ownership rights to inter-organisational relationships affect new business development in established firms.

Dr Rogan’s research has been published in Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Organisation Science, Management Science and Annual Review of Sociology.

She joined UNC Kenan-Flagler from INSEAD. Prior to her doctoral studies, she worked as a management consultant at Accenture in San Francisco where she was involved in the implementation of large-scale change initiatives including corporate entrepreneurship efforts in global technology firms. The focus of her client work involved the mobilisation of sponsorship networks to support corporate renewal efforts in these firms as well as the design and implementation of firm-wide training programmes.

Dr Rogan received her PhD in Strategic and International Management from London Business School and an undergraduate degree in Psychology from Yale University.

There will be a light lunch served ahead of the seminar in W2.01 at 12:00.