A study by Corinne Post, Management Professor and Chair at Ohio State University concludes that women leaders are more likely to encourage innovation within a company while men may prefer M&A.
This may go hand in hand with the finding that women leaders are perceived to be more in favour of skills development. Perhaps women have a greater belief that their teams can innovate, or can be helped to do so.
My first reaction when I read this was to protest, ‘But what about all those overwhelmingly male innovative companies in Silicon Valley etc?’ I presume we are talking about mainsteam companies rather than those on the cutting edge of technology.
Of course this could be a picture of women being more reluctant to commit financially or culturally to bringing another company on board.
And some companies seem to have such a culture of risk-aversion and blame that any buds of creativity would die in the frosty environment.
But if women are moving companies from win/lose, succeed/fail paradigms then perhaps they can be successful in creating more innovative companies.
