"I don't want to sound clichéd, but a lot of what I do involves overlaying
keen listening and observation skills with intuition," says Angela Shen-Hsieh,
43, president and CEO of
Visual i|o, an interactive visualization software company in Newton,
Massachusetts, that expects $5 million in revenue this year. "These are often
skills associated with women."
Shen-Hsieh says her company's software creates "better connections between
warm, thinking, human decision-makers and cold, raw, dispassionate data." Making
better connections and considering how the end-user will experience her products
are often seen as feminine sensibilities, she adds.
"The feminine perspective and sensibility comes from natural feminine
instincts of caring," says Kanchana Raman, the fortysomething president and CEO
of Avion Systems Inc.,
a multimillion-dollar tech firm in Atlanta specializing in converging
communications. Raman says her business needs 24/7 care and, by being available
and responsive to clients, her company goes beyond just delivering a quality
product.
"Being a woman has served me well in moving from right-brain to left-brain
activities, such as going from creative concept to implementation," says Kirsten
Mangers, 44, co-founder and CEO of
WebVisible, an Irvine,
California-based online advertising software company that projects $30 million
in sales this year. Mangers says her patience and leadership style come from
being a working mom. "Working mothers embrace the art of multitasking: running a
company and supporting customers and business partners without losing an eye for
innovation," she says.
"Women clearly behave differently in business and on teams than men do," says
I. Elaine Allen, research director at the
Arthur M. Blank Center
for Entrepreneurship at Babson College. "In designing software [in clinical
trials], they bring a more intuitive aspect to the final product. The women are
much more attuned to the user interface than building a faster and sleeker
product. They may be equally capable of designing an identically fast, sleek
product, but they want to step back and understand the user."
Adds Allen, "We're succeeding in teaching both genders how to leverage their
personal styles in leading and participating on team projects. The change has to
come from both sides of the gender divide."
Originally published in the October 2008 issue of Entrepreneur magazine.