The Direct and Indirect Impact of Gender Diversity in New Venture Teams on Innovation Performance

Women's interest and participation in entrepreneurship is growing. The limited and inconclusive findings on such growth have made it difficult to characterize its influence on new venture innovation performance. In addressing this issue, our study found a positive relationship between the gender diversity scores of new venture teams—reflecting the increased presence of women—and the innovation performance of new ventures. It also found the positive influence of gender diversity on (a) the relationship between the functional diversity of a venture team and its innovation performance and (b) the relationship between female employee presence and innovation performance.