In light of Innovate UK's decision to fulfil its funding promise to its Women in Innovation awards programme following a social media backlash, Heike Schuster-James talks about the challenges facing women entrepreneurs.
Innovate UK’s (IUK) decision to reduce the funding given out to the Women in Innovation awards programme has been fortunately reversed, but only after an outcry from the business community. Yet there is a growing evidence base demonstrating the high value contributions women make as employees, entrepreneurs and researchers. For instance the McKinsey analysis in 2019/20 found that 'companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on executive teams were 25 percent more likely to have above-average profitability than companies in the fourth quartile.'
Women can not only help to boost profits, but they can also provide different views to help make our cities safer and better places for us all to live and work. The global consultancy Arup, who Birmingham City University recently collaborated with in creating the first Sound Lab based in a university, carried out a fascinating study called 'Designing Cities that Work for Women' which showed how our cityscapes could be transformed by taking women's views into account.
Yet female founders still attract far less investment than male founders, with filing patents with the Intellectual Property Office was only 7.3%. At Birmingham City University, we understand how much drive and entrepreneurial acumen women bring. Both BCU’s student entrepreneurship training and STEAMhouse incubator for start-ups regularly support female founders.
At the 2024 Summer Student Entrepreneurship Awards, 8 of the 16 projects (50%) which received an award were started by women. As the number of IUK applicants demonstrates (1452 applications for 50 grants), there is no shortage of entrepreneurial women. There is only a shortage of funding.
"Let’s make sure all of us in Innovation Support roles work together to support great founders from every gender and background."
Heike Schuster-James is Head of Partnerships in Employment, Enterprise and Innovation at Birmingham City University. Find out more about BCU Business Services.