Top thinker
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We talk to Professor Lynda Gratton about her new research examining the role of gender composition in the workplace.
Professor Lynda Gratton is one of the leading authorities in the world on the future of work and how organisational structures and cultures will evolve over the coming decades.
Professor of Management Practice at London Business School and founding-director of the School's Lehman Brothers Centre for Women in Business, Lynda was named by the Times newspaper as one of the foremost business thinkers in the world, one of only four women in the top 50.
Over the last two decades Lynda has directed three major streams of research and her current project, supported by Lehman Brothers, investigates how companies can inspire women and build innovative teams.
In companies around the world, executives are putting the capacity for innovation at the top of their strategic agenda. Whilst academic research has focused on the circumstances needed for innovation, there is very little research on the potential impact of gender.
In her research, Lynda and her team are taking a closer look at the role, if any, gender plays in innovative teams, whilst making some recommendations about how companies can build and enhance their innovative capacity through team gender composition.
“In the past there has been a view that it takes a 30 percent women to men ratio to make a difference. However, we found that the optimal gender mix was about 50 percent men and 50 percent women. This shows that equal gender representation can help to unlock the innovative potential of teams.”
Lynda studied over 100 working teams and the most surprising discovery has been the extent to which men and women at work are similar.
Both struggle with their work/life balance so their personal circumstances are important; both have their own individual ways of working and both want meaningful and exciting work.
As a result of her research, Lynda believes there are three major workplace changes taking place:
- Technology, which makes virtual working a greater possibility, but also creates challenges around building co-operation;
- Demography, there will be very important differences between the generational cohorts (Lynda is about to launch a major study of Generation Y, the age group currently coming into the workforce);
- Globalisation, which has enormous implications on how we work. Given globalisation and London's growing knowledge economy, any new approaches to managing female talent could have a significant impact in many of the world's leading organisations.
Posted: Tuesday 9 February 2010