The Impact Of Entrepreneurial Team Gender Diversity On The Business Model Innovation

With raising attention to "Innovation and Entrepreneurship" in China's current business environment,Business model innovation(BMI),as a new source of innovation,is an important issue in the field of entrepreneurship.Because it can help startup companies build competitiveness to compete with incumbent companies in the market Thus,not only in the venture capital,but also in the entire business world,BMI has been widely concerned.Many scholars try to get some insights about the driving factors of BMI,and give different exploration and illustration from different perspectives.Based on the realistic background and theoretical logic,this paper proposes that gender diversity of entrepreneurial teams has an important impact on the business model innovation.The task interdependence and task complexity,as the two main team task characteristics,are used as the moderator variables to explore the impact of team task characteristics on the relationship between gender diversity of entrepreneurial teams and business model innovation.The questionnaires of this study,targeting the key members of the entrepreneurial teams,were conducted through a combination of offline and online channels.A total of 269 questionnaires were collected,of which 178 were valid questionnaires.The research hypothesis is tested by hierarchical linear regression.The results show that:(1)Gender diversity has a positive effect on the novelty of the business model design;(2)Task interdependence negatively regulates the relationship between gender diversity of entrepreneurial team and the novelty of the business model design;(3)Task complexity positively regulates the relationship between gender diversity of entrepreneurial team and the novelty of the business model design.Based on the Cognitive School in strategic management,we emphasize the importance of entrepreneurial teams' cognition in business model innovation.With the combination of theory and empirical research,this paper illustrates the mechanism of gender diversity influencing business model innovation based on Upper Echelons Theory,and develops research on business model innovation in entrepreneurship management in order to give some suggestions and guidance for the entrepreneurs to establish the teams as well as design the team task structures.