A Gender-Aware Study of Self-Leadership Strategies among High-Growth Entrepreneurs

Abstract

We apply a gender-aware framework to examine the self-leadership strategies men and women early stage high-growth entrepreneurs employ as they develop innovations. Utilizing a matched-pair sample of early stage entrepreneurs operating firms in high-technology business incubators, our results suggest that female and male entrepreneurs have significantly different self-goal-setting and self-cueing behaviors. Results also suggest male entrepreneurs who use stronger goal-setting behaviors increase their intellectual property development to a greater extent than female founders. Further, for female entrepreneurs who use greater self-cueing, the negative relationship realized with intellectual property development is lower than for male entrepreneurs.