Women on Inventor Teams Can Produce Products of Greater Value

A recent study by scholars at Emory University in Atlanta, the University of California, Riverside, and the University of Vienna in Austria, challenges a long-held finding in academic literature that the presence of women on company invention teams results in products of lesser value than inventions produced by teams that consist only of men. Previous research found that sexism by men on mixed-gender teams can compromise the entire team’s work and result in inventions of less value.

The authors found that the presence of women increased the invention value by 6.3 percent on average when the teams worked on inventions that are more complex, or, more precisely, have higher levels of integrality. With highly integral products, such as smartphones, each major component, such as the screen, cannot be modified without forcing changes on several other parts of the device, such as the circuit board, battery, and other parts. So, product development teams that work on highly integral inventions must have effective team coordination. This includes intimate familiarity with others’ contributions, effective discussion, and a willingness by team members to adjust their contributions accordingly for the product to work.

Co-author Haibo Liu, an assistant professor in the School of Business at the University of California, Riverside, explains that “while studies have found mixed gender teams tend to negatively impact invention value, especially for patented inventions, our research is saying, ‘wait a minute, it’s not the female inventors’ fault.’ This is more likely to be the result of gender-specific barriers that female inventors face in innovation settings. For example, previous studies have found that female inventors experience more negative outcomes in their work, despite strong evidence that female inventors are no less qualified than their male counterparts. The key point is that it really depends on the task. If the inventions are more integral or less modular, you need more coordination, more communication, and the female inventor is especially valuable in this condition.”

Dr. Liu added that “social psychology research has shown that women are less likely than the male inventors to make a hasty decision, or to be dominated by, say, the alpha male in the group. So, when there’s a female presence, people tend to be more caring for each other’s comments.” But more integral projects need more robust coordination and thus benefit from women, who, Dr. Liu says, “can make a mental shift toward more team-oriented norms and toward a psychologically safer atmosphere.”

The full study, “When Do Teams Generate Valuable Inventions? The Moderating Role of Invention Integrality on the Effects of Expertise Similarity, Network Cohesion, and Gender Diversity,” was published in the journal Production Operations and Management. It may be accessed here.