Abstract Book of the 7th Global Conference on Women’s Studies
Year: 2025
[PDF]
Report on an Inclusive Innovation System for the Private Sector: Business Enterprise Perspective
Maria Karaulova, Susanne Bührer, Sybille Reidl, Mei Araki, Carolina Wienand, Helene Schiffbänker
ABSTRACT:
This deliverable, developed under the Horizon Europe-funded INSPIRE project, examines how gender and intersectional considerations can be effectively embedded into innovation processes in the private sector, responding to the longstanding European policy ambition to nurture inclusive innovation ecosystems. Despite earlier efforts, the uptake of gendered innovations approach in the Business Enterprise Sector (BES) remains limited, and the reasons for this have remained poorly understood. Furthermore, most evidence on implementing a gendered innovations approach comes from the efforts to integrate gender-sensitive approaches into research content, rather than into technologies at more mature stages of readiness, or in the private sector more generally. This report presents findings from four pioneering policies that supported inclusive gendered innovation in companies: Norm-critical innovation (Vinnova, Sweden), FEMtech Research Projects (FFG, Austria), HORIZON 2020 Gender Flagging (European Commission, EU), and Funding of Innovation Projects (FONRID, Burkina Faso). These policies represent diverse models of public funding of gendered innovations. Mobilising a case study approach, we analysed the design and implementation of the policies, as well as the experiences of BES beneficiaries of applying for and implementing gendered innovation projects. Strategies, barriers, and challenges were analysed alongside with the outputs and longer-term outcomes of projects. The results shows that participation in gendered innovation programmes is an uncertain, costly and complex process, which can challenge companies in multiple ways. Nevertheless, a successful integration of the gender dimension in innovation process can result in better quality products, open access to new market segments, expand customer base and improve competitive advantage of companies, creating tangible economic as well as societal outcomes. Gendered innovation projects create new products, tools and methodologies, facilitated by capacity-building and other support from RFOs, and close collaboration among consortium partners. Nevertheless, ensuring longer-term sustainability of project outcomes, learning and diffusion of knowledge in the broader ecosystem remains a challenge, with few mechanisms currently available to facilitate further development and scaling.
Keywords: gendered innovations, business enterprise sector, norm-critical innovations