More and more we are seeing interest and action around the questions of the disparity between men’s and women’s participation in high growth enterprise.

On June 8, the inaugural ‘We Own It’ Summit was held in New York City. Presented by Astia, Kaufman Foundation for Entrepreneurship, Ernst & Young, Microsoft and a coalition of 24 investors, academic institutions and entrepreneurs, more than 230 delegates attended this very important inaugural session.

The goals of the summit were to create networks across a number of sectors in order to identify the impediments to growth of women-owned enterprises and to take action in effecting real change.

Recommendations included:

• gathering relevant information from sources which have been studying this phenomenon
• emphasizing success stories
• creating a network of stakeholders
• promoting the message of the economic importance of diversity in growth enterprises
• creating action that will lead to more successful women entrepreneurs and investors in high growth business enterprises

I’m really excited by this movement to develop and support women’s business growth. We’ve grappled with this challenge at the Centre for a long time. There is now a growing body of literature to study the issue, but, more important, we are seeing some action on the part of governments, academic institutions, service organizations and investors, at least in the US.

Here in Canada, a taskforce is developing a ‘Blueprint for Economic Growth’ which outlines action strategies to support women’s enterprises. We’ll be discussing this wonderful initiative on our web site in days to come, meanwhile, to find out more, and to support the action strategy, check out the website at www.telfer.uOttawa.ca/womensenterprise

Posted by Sandra Altner at 4:06 PM 0 Comments

Tags Blueprint for Economic Growth  ‘We Own It’ Summit  woman owned business  women entrepreneurs