The Entrepreneurial Mindset: Lessons from Women Innovators

Professor Maura McAdam keynote speaker at International Women’s Day event on Female Entrepreneurship

To mark International Women’s Day 2018 on March 8th, Dublin City University, Enterprise Ireland and Bank of Ireland hosted an event featuring women innovators who are successfully leading the way in business.

The event explored insights into the entrepreneurial mindset that drives the global ambition of contemporary women innovators with the aim of raising collective awareness and encouraging proactive sponsorship of our inclusion and diversity agenda.

Panellists and speakers included women who have made a career out of innovation and risk-taking by launching their own start-ups.

Maura McAdam, Professor of Management at DCU Business School and DCU Director of Entrepreneurship, delivered a keynote presentation. The themes in her keynote address included the following:

Entrepreneurship is a mindset, not a business model; we should not limit our definition of entrepreneurship to narrow interpretations such as new venture creation but should broaden our understanding of the concept to include exciting forms of entrepreneurship such as intrapreneurship.

Intrapreneurship is a concept that focuses on employees of a company that shares many of the traits of entrepreneurs. The only difference between entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship is the context in which it takes place. The mindset, thinking and skills are all the same!

The benefits of entrepreneurial thinking for Irish indigenous companies and multinationals are manifold. Intrapreneurs add value to their workplace via their innovative thinking in the same way entrepreneurs add sustainable value via new venture creation and job creation.

Fostering and harnessing entrepreneurial thinking in the workplace is of prime importance for educators and employers alike. For employers, attracting, optimising and retaining talent are key enablers in developing entrepreneurial mindsets in a company or organisation.

Diversity in the workplace takes many forms. Diverse and inclusive cultures equal greater innovation, creativity and entrepreneurial thinking and as a consequence better bottom line results. Diversity and inclusion should be key guiding principles in the strategies of companies looking to embrace entrepreneurial thinking among staff.

Taken to the national and international level, entrepreneurial mindset impacts the scaling up of companies’ activities and activates growth. This, in turn, means that entrepreneurial mindset stimulates and fuels global ambition.