The impact of R&D teams' gender diversity on innovation outputs

Abstract

Drawing from a sample of Spanish manufacturing firms, this paper examines the effect of R&D teams' gender diversity on different innovation outputs: products, services, process and organisational innovations. The paper argues that some innovations are best positioned to capitalise the benefits of gender diversity, because of the greater relevance of market insight and personal interactions. Allowing for systematic correlations among the different innovation outcomes, results indicate that, although the relationship between gender diversity and innovation outputs has always the shape of an inverted–U, gender diversity produces a greater impact on service and organisational innovation than in process innovation, while its greatest effect is on product innovation. Results also indicate that having R&D teams with diverse functional expertise has more potential than having a gender diverse R&D labour force, except for service innovation for which gender diversity is as relevant as functional diversity.