Innova Market Trends

FEMALE Think Tank

We give voice to academia representatives, who have been researching topics in relation to women in entrepreneurship.

The experts bring immense value and provide new approaches to create change.

The aim of INNOVA is to raise the voices of researchers that have been investigating topics around women in entrepreneurship and diversity.

Creating and spreading awareness from scientific knowledge to everyone.


How Women can improve their venture pitch outcomes

Henrik Wesemann
University of St. Gallen

How female founders evaluate their minority status according to their social identity

Marlies Edlinger
University of St. Gallen

It’s a shocking fact but only 9% of (Co-)Founders in Switzerland are female!

The good thing is – we can change it! Marlies research paper about ‘How female founders evaluate their minority status according to their social identity’ brought up some interesting theses and insights.


Female Founders in Switzerland – Pathways to change

Léonie Wüthrich
Zurich University of Applied Science

While enterpreneurship is a form of business that is increasingly rapidly, not everyone is profiting from the development. There are significant gender discrepancies globally when it comes to business founders. Switzerland catagorized as a well-developed country with a gender equal environment faces that as well.

The perecntage of female founders comapred to male founders is low.

Watch in our talk with Léonie what we can do to change this!


“We ask men to win and women not to lose, closing the gender gap in the start-up funding”

Interview Partner: Dana Kanze

Authors: Dana Kanze, Huang Ching-Hsin (Laura), Mark A. Conley and Tory Higgins

Academy of Management Journal

The paper brought up some super interesting theses and insights. There is a bias in questions of investors that leads to significant differences in the $$$ start-ups raise, depending on if the questions are more promotion- or prevention-oriented. And now guess what: YES, it’s also significantly more likely that female entrepreneurs get prevention-oriented questions when they’re in pitch situations.

But those are only a few interesting facts so please listen to the full audio interview with Dana Kanze below.


Please get in touch here if you are interested in joining us as a Partner or Sponsor.