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Archive for the ‘women's business development’ Category

Progress for Women in Federal Procurement? Not So Much …

Posted in federal procurement, women's business development, women's enterprise development, women-owned business, tagged , , , , , , , on July 1, 2012 | 1 Comment »

As we womenablers know, after a very long battle, a  Women-Owned Small Business Procurement program was launched by the US Small Business Administration in February 2011. How’s that program faring nearly 18 months later? Well…

First of all, there’s been no official commentary or updates from the SBA since the program was launched. Secondly, a recent analysis in an article on Bloomberg.com finds that just $21 million has been awarded through the new program – less than the cost of one unmanned drone. WIPP Lobbyist Ann Sullivan, quoted in the article, puts it well:

“We worked for 11 years to try and get this thing in place. Is the program working? Well, looking at those numbers, the answer is no, it’s not working.”

OK, womenablers, time to put the pressure on the SBA – and on all federal agency purchasing offices – to start utilizing this program!

For advocacy fodder, you might want to download and read these two reports looking at the performance of women-owned firms in the federal contracting arena:

These research reports show that once women-owned firms start winning federal contracts, their success and business size matches their male peers – proving they are up to the task and that access to government markets can level the playing field of business achievement.

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New Statistics on Economic Clout of Women-Owned Firms in US

Posted in business, statistics, women business owners, women's business development, women's business ownership, women-owned business, tagged , , , , on March 21, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Attention all womenablers – updated intelligence on the state of women-owned businesses in the US is now available. The 2012 State of Women-Owned Businesses Report, commissioned by American Express OPEN and prepared by Womenable, reveals that:

  • As of 2012, it is estimated that there are over 8.3 million women-owned businesses in the United States, generating nearly $1.3 trillion in revenues and employing 7.7 million people;
  • Comparing trends in the number and revenue accomplishments of women-owned and all firms by industries finds that women-owned firms are exceeding overall sector growth in seven of the 13 most populous industries, and there are several industries in which women business owners are standing toe to toe with their competitors in terms of revenue accomplishments;
  • How women-owned firms are faring depends on whether the point of comparison is all firms or all privately-held firms. Women-owned firms are holding their own, meeting or exceeding average revenue and employment growth, when compared to all privately-held firms – falling short only when their growth is compared to the very largest publicly-traded firms; and finally
  • While we learned last year that the growth of women-owned firms falters as they reach the 100-employee threshold and the million-dollar mark, a new analysis shows that the relative strength of million-dollar women-owned firms is greater now than it was a decade ago. Further, we may be losing a full accounting of the economic clout of women-led firms as they “outgrow” the 51%+ definition of being women-owned.

The 73-page report also contains state-level data as well as information on the 25 most populous metropolitan areas in the country. Learn more about this new must-have report, and download a copy for your womenabling reference shelf, at the link above. More blogposts will soon be available on OPENforum.com. You may also wish to read the study news release on BusinessWire, and read the lead article covering the study which appeared in the Wall Street Journal.

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Google Joins the Women’s Enterprise Development Bandwagon … Cautiously

Posted in International development issues, women's business development, women's enterprise development, tagged , , , , , , , on February 12, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Large corporations are starting to trip over each other in the race to assist women entrepreneurs in developing economies (not that you’ll hear us complaining – far from it)! There’s Coke’s 5 x 20 program, Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Women initiative, and Walmart’s Global Women’s Economic Empowerment Initiative.

Now jumping into the fray, with a pilot program in India, is Google. The new Women Entrepreneurs on the Web program is designed to help women business owners take their businesses online, and if it’s successful, watch for it to expand to other countries. A helping hand, or a play for global domination of the web? You decide – and keep watch for their expansion into other countries.

What are the blogmeisters saying? Read a few posts on Forbes.com, Fusible, and from Google India itself.

Find more about the program at womenentrepreneursontheweb.com or at the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, which looks to be partnering on the mentoring aspects of the effort.

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Women’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Posted in business, International development issues, women's business development, women's business ownership, women's business research studies, tagged , , , , on January 26, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

I’m just back from an event at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, where the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) held a series of meetings focused on innovation policy. One item on the agenda was a discussion of women’s entrepreneurship and innovation – more specifically the sharing of the results of a two-year effort studying how women and men business owners view and implement innovation in their enterprises.

The analysis is based on a 6-country survey of women and men business owners (in Brazil, Jordan, Sweden, Switzerland, Uganda and the United States), all of who own established firms with employees and with between $10,000 and $10 million USD in sales. Womenable helped to design the survey, conducted the comparative analysis, and authored the report for UNCTAD. That report has not yet been published (this meeting produced a draft report that is now out for comment among UNCTAD stakeholders – we’ll let you know when it’s publicly available), but here are some of the most intriguing findings:

  • Personal motivation is a key driver for innovative behavior within both women-owned and men-owned firms, but women are found to be much more likely than men to innovate in order to address a social need they see in their communities or in the marketplace;
  • There are more similarities than differences between women and men business owners in the operationalization of innovation within their firms, including trademarking, intellectual property protection, and investment in research and development, and in the orientation toward risk;
  • Differences in risk tolerance are much more likely to be seen by development context than gender, with owners in the developing economies studied being much more cautious about risk;
  • Access to finance is the most important barrier to innovation in all countries and among both women and men, but cultural constraints are an additional constraint – not only to innovation but to business growth in general – for women in Jordan and Uganda.

When it’s published, you’ll see that the report contains an extensive series of recommendations for policy and programmatic action, including:

  • consideration of innovation-focused business exchange programs (regional, national or international) – as well as greater gender diversity in the composition of trade fairs and trade missions;
  • establishment of targeted training and technical assistance to encourage innovation in social enterprises; and
  • the creation of mentoring and role model efforts aimed at increasing innovation among women business owners.

The report also contains an extensive bibliography of related research and links to organizations and web sites related to women’s entrepreneurship and innovation, as well as summaries of each of the six country-specific reports.

To download and review the PowerPoint presentation I gave at the UNCTAD meeting, CLICK HERE. For more information about the full event agenda, CLICK HERE. And here’s a link to another interesting UNCTAD report, Applying a Gender Lens to Science, Technology and Innovation.

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Pearls from New GEM Women’s Report

Posted in women business owners, women's business development, women's business ownership, women's enterprise development, women's business research studies, women-owned business, tagged , , , , , , on December 23, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

A new report on trends in women’s entrepreneurship, drawing on the multi-country Global Entrepreneurship Monitor surveys, has just been published by a team of researchers from Babson College. The GEM 2010 Women’s Report draws on data collected from surveys of over 175,000 adults in 59 countries, including 14,000 women business owners.

As in previous GEM women’s reports, the researchers point to a continuing gap in entrepreneurial activity among women compared to men, lower levels of self-confidence among women, and lower levels of growth aspirations among women business owners compared to their male counterparts.

The 59 economies are grouped into three categories (newly-named as of the 2008 GEM study and roughly equivalent to the previous low, moderate, and high income definitions): factor-driven, efficiency-driven, and innovation-driven. However, these categorizations do not seem to impact the gender analysis on many of the key findings:

  • women are found to have smaller, less diverse professional networks than men,
  • in all but one country (Ghana!), women are less likely than men to own businesses, and
  • while internationalization increases with economic development, in all three types of economies women are less likely to trade internationally than men.

One intriguing new analysis contained in this report is a look at entrepreneurship gender gaps over time in the 16 countries that have been included in the GEM consortium for most of the past nine years. It was found that the gender gaps in entrepreneurship rates that had been quite wide in Argentina and Brazil as of 2002 have now virtually disappeared, while – conversely – in China where there had previously been no gender gap in entrepreneurship rates there is now a significant gap, with women now being much less likely than men to own a business.

For more information about the report, and to download a free copy of the 56-page report, CLICK HERE, and for a listing of all five GEM women’s reports published since 2004, CLICK HERE.

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