Editor’s note: Drew Boyd is co-author of Inside the Box: A Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results (Simon & Schuster). Previously a Johnson & Johnson executive, Boyd is an assistant professor of marketing and innovation at the University of Cincinnati.
Would you guess whether a man or a woman invented each of the following items: the zipper, a circular saw, the sewing machine, Kevlar and LTE technology? Some of the answers may surprise you. But it may be even more surprising to realize how much gender affects innovation.
Studies show that gender of the inventor can affect perceived level of creativity and perceived level of inventiveness. Furthermore, men and women inherently create ideas differently. So who are better inventors – men or women?
Research by Lynne Millward and Helen Freeman found that while men and women are equally innovative, their gender role within the context of an organization can affect how they are perceived and how they behave when innovating and sharing ideas. Highlights of their research included:
• Men were perceived as more innovative and risk-taking. Women were perceived as more adaptive and risk-adverse. Millward and Freeman suggest that “gender roles may interact with the role of the manager to inhibit (in the case of women) or facilitate (in the case of men) the likelihood of innovative behavior.”
• People perceived that innovative solutions came from a male manager and adaptive solutions came from a female manager.
• Innovative solutions were more likely to be implemented if they were suggested by a male manager.
• Innovation carried different levels of risk for men than for women. Men were expected to take more risks when innovating and sharing ideas. Failure was less damaging to men because risk-taking was expected of them. Women were expected to be less risky, which appeared to limit both their degree of innovation and their willingness to share ideas. Failure was found to be more damaging for women so they behaved more adaptively in innovation exercises.
In another study, researchers Izabela Lebuda and Maciej Karwowski tested how gender of the inventor and the uniqueness of the inventor’s name affect perception of the invention itself. They divided participants into groups to evaluate creative products in poetry, science, music and art. Each group evaluated the same products, which were signed by different fictional names: a unique male name, a common male name, a unique female name and a common female name. They found the following:
• The highest creativity score was earned by a painting signed with a unique female name, while the lowest went to that same painting with a common female name.
• For the science-related products, works signed by any male name scored much higher than the same products signed by women. In fact, the science product signed by a common female name scored even lower than the anonymous control group.
• In the area of music, any piece signed by a unique male name was rated highest.
• Poems received the best scores when signed by a unique female name and the lowest from a common male name.
In our daily work, systematic bias caused by gender and other factors can lead us astray. For example, science is still perceived as male-dominated and we may tend to downgrade new science concepts generated by women. In other domains, literary and artistic, we may put too much of a premium on works generated by women with unique names.
In addition, how we judge a creative idea is affected by how we perceive its inventor. Without realizing it, we may overvalue or undervalue a new concept and make poor choices in the product-development process as a result.
How can we overcome these conundrums? My advice is to be aware of the biases but embrace the differences. In observing hundreds of innovation exercises, I have found that neither gender is the better innovator. In fact, I have observed that they innovate better together. In fact, optimal creativity occurs when there is a balanced blend of men and women using a systematic process to innovate.
To combat gender bias, innovation workshops need a process to assure that women feel they can innovate “bigger” and share those ideas with the group. If, as the research suggests, women are more likely to hold back, then the facilitation approach has to break through it. Otherwise, we lose the inherent value of the equal innovation talent they bring to the table.
On the up side, gender differences can be beneficial. The adaptive behavior in women and more risk-taking behavior in men provide a balance during innovation. I have observed a complementary effect that seems to yield better results – each partner holds the other accountable for ideas that are both novel and adoptable. Working in pairs, men and women also do a better job of expressing jointly developed new ideas. Workshop processes that pair men and women will be more fruitful.
To avoid gender bias during the innovation process, try these techniques:
Use a facilitated approach to innovation that puts people into groups of two or three. When sharing ideas, make sure participants don’t give credit to one person for a specific idea. When an idea emerges from a group (as opposed to an individual), people associate the idea with the team, not with any one person.
Share ideas outside of the innovation space. Set up a collaboration tool such as Google Docs where teams can submit ideas in real time. Make sure the idea collection software does not track who entered each idea. Assign team numbers instead of people’s names.
Have ideas evaluated by a different team than the one that generated them. Use a weighted decision model to assess ideas. Use scoring criteria that are relevant to the issue the team is facing and weight them based on importance. Test the scoring model on past successful ventures as well as past unsuccessful ones. Testing your scoring model on both known successes and known failures lets you see if the model works.
Using these approaches helps teams recognize that although men and women create ideas differently, allowing them to work cooperatively helps them achieve greater outcomes. In addition, these techniques break down gender bias and eliminate the risk of losing great ideas that could have resulted in valuable, actionable innovations.
In case you were wondering, women invented the circular saw (Tabitha Babbit) and Kevlar (Stephanie Kwolek). Men invented the zipper (Whitcomb Judson) and the first sewing machine (Barthélemy Thimonnier). And a female-male team, Hedy Lamarr and George Anthiel, co-invented LTE (long-term evolution) technology, a telecommunication solution used to help end World War II and a system that has advanced the very same cellular phone functionality and wireless Internet access we use today.
Sources: Millward and Freeman. “Role Expectations as Constraints to Innovation: The Case of Female Managers.” Creativity Research Journal. 14:1, 2002. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/S15326934CRJ1401_8. Accessed 6/24/13. Lebuda and Karwowski. “Tell Me Your Name and I’ll Tell You How Creative Your Work Is: Author’s Name and Gender as Factors Influencing Assessment of Products’ Creativity in Four Different Domains.” Creativity Research Journal. 25:1, 2013. 137-142.