Gender and performance: Preliminary evidences from Italian innovative SMEs

Entrepreneurship and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play a pivotal role in the socio-economic development worldwide. They are, indeed, recognised as important economic drivers as their activities can boost economic growth in various ways, such as being source of employment, promoting equality among socio-economic groups, and fostering the development of new products. In line with this, SMEs contribution to innovation has been extensively investigated by researchers and policymakers. European Union, for example, has developed numerous programmes to foster innovation in and by SMEs, even identifying, categorizing, and periodically analysing the so-called ‘innovative SMEs’. However, very scant is the attention, at the international level, devoted to the analysis of the role of gender in innovation per se and in innovative SMEs. This chapter fits into this underinvestigated stream of research by specifically analysing the impact, if any, of gender on Italian innovative SMEs’ performance.