Gender and Innovation in the New Economy

"This book has been long awaited! Through rich data analysis and engaging vignettes, the authors make the complex relationships between gender, the platform economy, digitalization, and the Internet clear and intelligible for the reader. Poutanen and Kovalainen create a new synoptic view of the often forgotten role of women in invention and innovation. The work is laudably future-oriented, as the authors set gender relationships at the heart of the rapidly developing new economy." (Professor Robert Blackburn, Kingston Business School, Kingston University, President European Council for Small Business and Entrepreneurship) "This book brings a fresh approach to the new economy by putting gender into the center stage. Poutanen and Kovalainen make a real difference to the existing innovation research in business and in social sciences. This is an essential reading for academics, students and for policymakers." (Professor Ellen Kuhlmann, Goethe-University Frankfurt, Institute for Economics, Labour and Culture, Germany and Karolinska Institute, Medical Management Centre, Sweden)

This book provides a thorough and novel examination of the gendered nature of innovations in the new economy. It tracks the contemporary shift from heavy industry to game industry and how this has altered relationships between gender, identity, corporate culture, creative work, and the future of business. Through empirical research and theoretical analysis, the authors present their own carefully contextualized cases and conceptual frameworks relating themes of innovation and gender to recent theories concerning globalization and transnationalism.

This wide-ranging and interdisciplinary text provides readers with insightful entries on what innovations are and the ways innovation processes become gendered. It explores the business landscape based on creative work and offers a wealth of information for scholars of entrepreneurship, management, sociology, cultural studies, and communication.