10th Business & Management Conference, Paris

THE INNOVATION IN BUSINESS START-UPS OWNED BY ROMANIAN WOMEN

OANA BARBULESCU

Abstract:

Although women's presence in world entrepreneurship is lower than that of men, feminine entrepreneurship is steadily on the rise. Numerous previous studies analyzed different aspects of the businesses developed by women, such as the profile of female entrepreneurs, but very few examined how innovative businesses led by them are. In this article we aim at identifying the degree of innovation existing in start-ups owned by women. The results of the qualitative research carried out on a sample of 20 female entrepreneurs in Romania show that there is an indirect relationship between the age of the entrepreneurs and the degree of innovation existing in their companies. In other words, the results reveal the fact that the youngest respondents have the necessary expertise to develop businesses where the new technologies are used to create solutions to the real problems identified in the market, this segment of female entrepreneurs being predominantly founders of businesses based on artificial intelligence. As for the domains, the most innovative sector was the medical one for which applications for on-line programming and applications involving digitization of patient information were designed. This research done on a small size sample could represent a starting point for carrying out a broader study, its results being useful in developing policies that could stimulate the creation of innovative businesses in accordance with the level of development of each country.

Keywords: innovation, start-up, entrepreneurship, women, business

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