Women Business Owners: Engine of Global Growth

Abstract

I want to start this chapter with the fact that women drive the world economy and then share a story that relates to businesswomen in the world marketplace. Forty years ago, Harvard Professor Theodore Levitt was conducting a case discussion in his marketing class about a person’s rise in the workplace. The fact that the person in this particular case was a woman was disguised to the students, who were predominantly men. After a long brainstorming discussion, Professor Levitt finally told the class that the protagonist in the case was a woman: “Boys, you’d better wake up now, because there are going to be more and more women in management, and they’re going to have an edge. You fellows are going to be so competitive with each other that the thought of collaboration [with women] is never going to cross your minds. Women will come in willing and able and ready, and you’re going to lose.”iii