Female Entrepreneurs Targeting Women: Strategic Redirection Under Scientific Decision-Making

This paper explores whether and to what extent a scientific approach to decision-making can be a useful tool for helping entrepreneurs overcome limitations in the commercial exploitation of their idea, particularly when these limitations stem from their status as users of the products or services. Using data from a variety of sources, including three randomized control trials and LinkedIn data, and focusing on female entrepreneurs who develop a value proposition targeting female consumers as a case of user entrepreneurs, this paper shows that exposure to a training that encourages entrepreneurs to develop theoretical maps about their business propositions and validate them with evidence prompts more radical pivots on their initial ideas compared with entrepreneurs with a value proposition that does not target women explicitly. In turn, treated female entrepreneurs with a female-targeted value proposition who pivot radically show better performance in launching and sustaining their ventures compared with those who have not pivoted. Funding: This work received funding support from the ICRIOS—Invernizzi Center for Research in Innovation, Organization, Strategy & Entrepreneurship at Bocconi University, the Innovation Growth Laboratory, the Strategy Research Foundation, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy of the U.K. Government (project 104754, “A Scientific Approach to SMEs Productivity”), City, University of London, The Italian Ministry of Education, Universities and Research (PRIN project prot. 2017PM7R52, CUP J44I20000220001), and the Polytechnic of Turin. This research was approved by Bocconi Research Ethics Committee with protocol references 2016-III/13.696, 77133-2 and by City Ethics Committee with reference ETH1819-0351. The four studies presented in this article are included in the AEA RCT Registry [AEARCTR-0006578, AEARCTR-0002205, AEARCTR-0006579, AEARCTR-0003875]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.17235 .