Women's Entrepreneurship

1. Women’s Entrepreneurship
- opportunities and challenges
Vicki MacLeod
Secretary-General, GTWN and Special Advisor
to Telstra on Women’s Entrepreneurship
BIAC Workshop on Women’s Entrepreneurship, OECD, Paris, 24 June 2014

2. What is the female economy and why
does it matter to the mobile industry?
Women as consumers
Women as social
networkers
Women as entrepreneurs Women as experts
Female Economy

3.  Increasing numbers of leaders and decision
makers are women
 They may have different backgrounds and interests to men, and may
prioritise the social, as well as the economic impact of purchasing decisions.
 Women are increasingly becoming
entrepreneurs using mobile internet technology as the basis for a
global business built around family commitments.
 More women on boards will change the culture of business
and the internal working of companies.
Women as entrepreneurs

4.  Most women who work are in health, education, retail,
tourism, and government – often in customer or client facing
roles.
 Only a small number of women work primarily in ICT.
 Attempts to get more women to study STEM subjects have largely failed.
 The mobile industry needs to move faster into these parts of
the economy, as it evolves beyond technology towards the
application of technology.
 The industry could benefit from courses which combine female-
preferred subjects with ICT, and direct recruitment of experts
Women as experts

5. Women’s Entrepreneurship
is not well understood
 The economic impact of women is substantial, but we lack a reliable
set of data, including for the mobile industry and ICT sector generally.
 Women entrepreneurs create new jobs for themselves and others and
provide society with different solutions to management, organisation
and business problems.
 Women’s participation in entrepreneurship is lower than men’s and in
different economic areas, but the reasons for this have been largely
ignored.
 Governments and businesses often do not take into account the
specific needs of women entrepreneurs and may favour men by
overlooking the challenges faced by women, who often have more
family responsibilities.

6. Entrepreneurship support models
Mentoring
Start-up accelerators
Collective investment
Public—private partnership
Social networking
Industry associations

7. Entrepreneurship through mentoring
 The Global Telecom Women’s Network (GTWN) mentors the next generation
of women and girls who want a career in ICT and assists them to create their
own businesses.
 The GTWN and International Education Association (IEA) announced on 16 May
in Beirut, Lebanon, a new “Youth To Youth” Scholarship Program – a summer
Internship Programme at the Dhour Choueir Secondary School.
 With GTWN funding, 10 female students who have completed an introduction
to Scratch visual programming will mentor other students in the use of the
Raspberry Pi and the Scratch visual programming language.
 The GTWN has been working with IEA since establishing the Star 1 initiative
in April 2012 in cooperation with the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Please see:
http://gtwn.org/star1/ for details.
See the media report at http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-News/2014/May-17/256761-lebanon-gets-first-
taste-of-innovative-raspberry-pi-technology.ashx#axzz31yZYq3F8

8. Entrepreneurship through accelerators
 GTWN President for Australia, Telstra’s Chief Operations Officer, Kate
McKenzie, has established a hi-tech accelerator hub in Sydney called Muru-D
(‘muru’ is aboriginal for path; D for digital)
 Every 6 months for a minimum of three years, up to 10 start ups will be
selected and given $A40,000 to help them turn their digital ideas into reality
in exchange for a 6% stake of successful businesses.
 Four of the nine winners in the first round have a female CEO or co-founder.
 The group is headed by Ann Parker, who joined Telstra from Telefonica where
she was European Head of Operations for their startup accelerator
programme – Wayra.
 Among the first successes for Muru-D are Pixc – an easy way for businesses to
transform basic product images into professional ones; FarmBot – which
provides open source tools to help people grow food; and Vistr - an online
software that tracks, forecasts and improves small business cash flows by
interpreting and shaping smart decisions from Xero accounting data.
For more detail see https://muru-d.com/

9. Social entrepreneurship through
collective investment
 GTWN Board members have established a collective investment fund —
Oceania Women’s Network Satellite Pte Ltd (OWNSAT) in Singapore to manage
a portfolio of investments in socially valuable projects.
 OWNSAT’s first investment is in Kacific, which is a satellite operator with a
mission to “Connect the Dots” of the Pacific islands, and empower small
business operators in these countries.
 Kacific will operate a high throughput satellite payload on a geostationary
satellite and sell its bandwidth to wholesale customers, providing residential
and business connectivity to many Pacific island nations by 2017.
 GTWN Founder Candace Johnson presented Kacific’s plans to the Ambassadors
of the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) at the UN and the ITU on 6 May
2014.
For more detail see http://kacific.com/

10. Entrepreneurship through
public-private partnerships
 Every European Digital (EED) was founded in 2011 by GTWN Global
President, Bridget Cosgrave to respond to the digital connectivity challenge
and to address “white/grey spots” in broadband coverage.
 EED investigates business models based on market opportunities for both
wholesale infrastructure operating company(ies) and an infrastructure
investment fund.
 EED is technology agnostic and raises private investor funding to match
available EU funds and other financial instruments available from EU
institutions and national development banks.
 EED’s goal is to create value for shareholders, while also creating jobs for
young Europeans in the countries of operation, which currently include Poland
and Belgium.

11. Entrepreneurship through networking
For more see http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Global-Board-Ready-Women-4677558/about
 Global Board Ready Women was created in October 2012 by GTWN Board
members as a database of women qualified to sit on a listed company board.
 It is compiled by the European Business Schools/Women on Boards Task Force
in association with The Forté Foundation and is administered by the Financial
Times Non-Executive Director's Club on the global business platform,
LinkedIn. The group now has about 3,500 members.
 Each of the individuals selected for the database are linked with BoardEx’s
Profiles and to access BoardEx’s database of more than 500,000 corporations.
 Only women with at least 5 years’ senior company experience are accepted as
members onto the database.

12. Role of Industry Associations
in supporting women’s entrepreneurship
 Industry associations such as BIAC and the GSMA balance the current
needs of their members against a vision of the future digital economy
and society.
 Industry Associations provide a platform for industry to debate and
develop consensus views on economic transition.
 GTWN engages with BIAC and through it the OECD, as a Knowledge
Partner, and contributes expertise and speakers to events on
entrepreneurship and digital skills issues.
 Using reports and case studies, industry associations spread knowledge
of the importance of women’s entrepreneurship as a key driver of
economic growth and social innovation.

13. What are the obstacles to success and
how can they be overcome?
 Women often feel isolated in the male dominated world of entrepreneurship.
 Women’s entrepreneur networks – like the Global Telecom Women’s Network
(GTWN) and the GSMA’s Connected Women program – can help overcome
many of the barriers faced by women entrepreneurs.
 Women often dream big, but lack the knowledge, information and experience
about investing that is required to be a successful entrepreneur.
 Women can overcome these obstacles by working through their networks
together in teams, with a mix of experienced and up and coming
entrepreneurs to guide the newer entrants.
 Not one size fits all: select the entrepreneurship model, the approach and the
team to suit your goal.

14. What we need now
 Better qualitative information and quantitative data and statistics are
required to profile women entrepreneurs (demographic information, barriers
to start-up and growth).
 Targeted training schemes for women in both entrepreneurial skills (such as
business planning and investment) and digital skills.
 Recognition at the national and international level of the important role
played by entrepreneur networks and industry associations as valuable tools
to develop and promote women’s entrepreneurship.
 Engagement with stakeholders in government, industry and academia about
the research data that is needed, and how their industry and investment
policies can be improved to foster women’s entrepreneurship.

15. The w
• Incorporate women’s entrepreneurship as a driver
of innovation in all policy areas
• Work with industry to develop quantitative and
qualitative benchmarks to measure progress
towards greater diversity and inclusion in both
OECD and non-OECD countries
• Develop cross-sectoral working team to identify
best practice examples and case studies
• Include women’s entrepreneurship in B20
innovation and investment agenda.
Recommendations for OECD future action