Female Founders Are the Engine for Social Innovation

There are many ways to be innovative, but to create real impact fast, building your own business is one of the most effective ways. That applies especially for green or social innovation. We, as a society, need people taking the risk of starting their own venture and bringing their ideas to life. However the start-up industry has limited innovation power due to some significant challenges. The major problem is not unknown; we are having a name for it: it is called gender imbalance. Only 20% of start-ups have one or more women in their founding team. That is a significant underrepresentation of female founders and is true across all countries in the world. This prevents start-up ecosystems from taking advantage of all available innovation opportunities. This gender imbalance in the start-up industry is alarming. Recent studies in Germany show that more than half (54.1%) of female founders pursue social entrepreneurship (male founders 39.4%). Imagine the start-up ecosystem as a playground. I will give you some insights on the history of how the playground was built, how women are playing today and where they are limited, and last but not least, how we need to change the rules to give every player on the playground the same opportunities.