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The current state of research in Germany shows that women are significantly underrepresented in innovative startups. The important potential of female founders for the innovation culture in Germany is thus not being exploited. The visibility of innovative female founders has an impact on their success, as it facilitates their access to capital, networks and markets. In addition, visible role models can motivate young women to contribute their own innovative potential to a startup. This work-in-progress paper provides insight into the conception and the methodical approach within the project “Visibility of Innovative Female Founders in Germany” which examines the mechanisms and structures that influence the visibility of innovative female founders. On the one hand, the activity/passivity of female founders with regard to public visibility is investigated. On the other hand, the project examines selection mechanisms of media professionals as well as venture capitalists and identifies the success factors for the public visibility of (female and male) start-up founders in hightech companies. By comparing the results of these two sub-surveys, best practices will be identified and measures to improve the visibility of innovative female founders will be developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a qualitative study, this paper provides recommendations for an online marketing strategy for a crowdfunding campaign. Whereas the introduction of an innovative product to a crowdfunding community, such as Kickstarter.com, requires less effort, the effort in marketing the product, which most likely does not even exist yet, is relatively high. In addition to the legal, personnel, and financial challenges, a major challenge is the missing knowledge that is needed to be able to communicate the product effectively. More flexible, innovative, and proactive marketing measures are recommended for crowdfunding campaigns in order to achieve the funding goal. The community at crowdfunding platforms is essential for a successful crowdfunding campaign. Social media acts as a catalyst to spread the campaign. Honest as well transparent communication is mandatory for a successful execution. Innovative business models are difficult in terms of promoting classical marketing measures. To explore successful crowdfunding marketing strategies, a qualitative study was conducted. The study includes campaigns completed in Germany, which were realized in the last 4 years. Only founders that have successfully conducted a crowdfunding campaign on the Kickstarter platform and delivered the product were interviewed. A total of five Co-founders of crowdfunding campaigns were interviewed, who received a funding of approximately 20,000 Euro to one million Euros. The results of the study could show the resources and the amount of expertise needed to successfully conduct a crowdfunding campaign at Kickstarter. The results of the study support the theoretical elaboration that crowdfunding campaigns of a certain scheme have to be prepared and that certain methods are advantageous for an online marketing strategy in founding companies. It is possible to run a crowdfunding campaign without any marketing knowledge, but the knowledge presented in this paper will help to address the right audience and make a campaign more successful. This paper is relevant for founding companies that want to conduct a crowdfunding campaign, but also for anyone who is struggling with classical marketing methods in crowdfunding projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research is focused on whether female entrepreneurs face institutional discrimination based on prejudices. Therefore, in consideration of the institutional theory, this paper aims to clarify how informal institutions, such as norms, values and attitudes of society impact female entrepreneurship. To visualize these informal norms, values and attitudes of society towards women, common prejudices against women were utilized. The results revealed that the analyzed prejudices represent obsolete social perceptions against women which lack any validity and justification. However, these prejudices still negatively influence – directly or indirectly – the behavior, career choices, motivation and self-perception of female entrepreneurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crowdsourcing provides an online platform matching the knowledge and expertise of people scattered around the world with problems to solve. More recently, some companies have introduced this approach within their own company boundaries. Big, multinational corporations oftentimes have thousands of employees widespread around the globe, embedded in divisions and virtually separated from each other. Although a large proportion of companies nowadays use social IT to mitigate problems of distance, only few companies are able to access their employees’ wisdom effectively – let alone efficiently. And while external crowdsourcing nowadays represents a field of extraordinary interest in both the corporate and scientific world, internal crowdsourcing (IC) has received much less attention. In this business case study, we report the findings of our investigation of the different solutions to IC implemented at SAP SE. With almost 100,000 employees worldwide, SAP possesses significant resources within the company, which IC can help to access. Based on interview data collected in 2018, we analyse the process and governance structures of the different IC approaches used at SAP. The interviewees represent various perspectives on the observed IC mechanisms. We identify six different approaches to IC that cover a wide array of use cases. Ranging from the search for new and sustainable business models with the aim to impact and improve the lives of millions of people to an approach that uses crowdsourcing for the competence development of SAP’s employees. The aim of this paper is to provide a framework embedded in previous theoretical discussions as well as lessons learned from a large multinational corporation from Germany. We believe that our findings will help academics and practitioners alike to understand the determinants for a successful introduction of IC to increase the innovation potential of firms, further the entrepreneurial mindset of its employees and thus provide a competitive advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge management has been becoming a decisive activity in the current openly competitive globalized economy. It has been empirically proven that knowledge, in combination with traditional production factors, drives the growth of enterprises, nations, and regions. Therefore, most countries tend to be knowledge based. The creation, dissemination, and use of knowledge represent key processes that help companies with their innovation activities. Consequently, innovation allows companies to generate added value and get ahead of their competitors. However, a number of recent studies have shown that innovation does not occur in isolation and innovation factors affect each industry differently. This is why economic entities fail – because they are unable to exploit the potential of cooperation (for example, using the Triple Helix principle in networks) and by ineffectively spending public funds to support innovative activities. On the other hand, Germany has the largest economy in the European Union and one of the strongest and most competitive economies in the world (Germany was ranked fourth in the 2015–2016 rankings of the Global Competitiveness Index carried out by the World Economic Forum). This is due to the fact that stimulus for investment, a good climate for innovation, and private-sector investment has crucial importance for the German government. Therefore, the goal of this article is to analyze the drivers influencing businesses´ innovation activities in different industries in Germany. We show that different factors influence the innovation activities of different industries. Our results provide (1) practical implications for policy makers (not only in Germany) and (2) an initial analysis of German industries and a proposal for partners and factors that affect the innovative activities of different sectors. This proposal could help other economies support the creation of innovation (especially, countries from Central and Eastern Europe – the CEE Countries). For the analysis, we created original multiple linear regression models using data from the Community Innovation Survey conducted in Germany between the years 2010– 2012. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]