Technological innovation in Colombian small firms : a gender multi-group analysis

Background: Studies on innovations have been focused on teams, institutions, and organisations without accounting for the role of the executive's gender. Objectives: This research aims to analyse how small Colombian firms manage technological innovation from the perspective of the gender of executives. Methods/Approach: A quantitative approach and cross-sectional, non-experimental design through Structural Equation Models with PLS-SEM was used. We self-administered a survey randomly to gather data from 145 small firms' owners or managers in the department of Bogota, Colombia. Results: The results obtained from multi-group analysis evidence that process innovation has a strong and significant positive impact on the innovation of products, and no significant differences were found when comparing the performance of male executives versus female executives. However, descriptive statistics showed that female executives give more importance to the process and product innovation activities, and they demonstrated to manage a better product innovation performance than male executives. Conclusions: The evidence reveals that female executives are more committed to developing new products and choose to acquire new skills or equipment to develop products and processes. It is, therefore, essential to eliminate organisations' cultural stereotypes and take advantage of women's potential in management leadership.