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A research project that aims to help ambitious female entrepreneurs find potential investors by navigating the funding funnel has been awarded a grant of €843,445 by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). Professor Pursey Heugens and Dr Laura Rosendahl Huber from Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University have been given the funding for their project Addressing the gendered odds of new venture founding and funding. In January 2025 they will begin five years of research into female-led ventures to break new theoretical ground and develop an in-depth understanding of unintended consequences of promoting female entrepreneurship. Insights from these studies will lay the groundwork for developing innovative two-sided interventions, which can help ambitious female entrepreneurs.

Untapped potential in the gender gap

Even after years of targeted policy initiatives, there are still large gaps between the number of ventures founded by men and women, and even more so in the amount of start-up funding received by male and female entrepreneurs. Dr Laura Rosendahl Huber explained: “This gender gap presents untapped economic and societal potential. In particular, research has shown that female inventors and entrepreneurs are crucial to new product developments in areas like women’s health, speech language care, and online mental health services that have a significant impact on economic growth, prosperity, and societal inclusivity. Fostering female entrepreneurship also helps to change the distribution of wealth and opportunities because female entrepreneurs are more likely to employ other women and to invest in other female ventures and social ventures in general.

 “Our project has three scientific aims over the next five years. First, we want to develop a theory specifically for female-led ventures based on our reviews of existing literature for female entrepreneurship. We anticipate we’ll be able to reinterpret existing findings using a framework that’s based on the theory of the firm. This asks why female-led ventures exist, how their boundaries are determined, how the differing interests of owners and managers can be reconciled, how firms should be organised internally for efficiency, and why performance outcomes differ between firms.


Returns for wealth, health and welfare

“Then we can test the predictions of this emerging theory in real life using detailed data that shows what happens when society promotes growth entrepreneurship among women – the realistic returns for wealth, health, and welfare.

“Finally, we can use the new knowledge we’ve gathered to develop and test two-sided interventions that can help ambitious female entrepreneurs navigate the funding funnel and develop their ventures by reducing the social distance separating them from potential investors.”

Most of the project will be conducted in the Netherlands and will give two new opportunities at RSM for a PhD student and a post-doctoral researcher. The project will link up with Dutch partners to focus on interventions in the Netherlands as well as with researcher Dr Vera Rocha from Copenhagen Business School and a team of international external advisors.

More information

Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM) is one of Europe’s top-ranked business schools. RSM provides ground-breaking research and education furthering excellence in all aspects of management and is based in the international port city of Rotterdam – a vital nexus of business, logistics and trade. RSM’s primary focus is on developing business leaders with international careers who can become a force for positive change by carrying their innovative mindset into a sustainable future. Our first-class range of bachelor, master, MBA, PhD and executive programmes encourage them to become critical, creative, caring and collaborative thinkers and doers. www.rsm.nl

For more information about RSM or this release, please contact Erika Harriford-McLaren, communications manager for RSM, on +31 10 408 2877 or by email at harriford@rsm.nl.

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