Pipes, prisms, and patent sales: How personal wealth expands and contracts the gender gap in entrepreneurship

Research Summary This study investigates whether there is a gender gap in the sale of patents by entrepreneurs and examines whether the personal wealth of female entrepreneurs can compensate for it. Using a sample of 107,697 independent inventors, we overcome the empirical challenge of measuring wealth through a novel approach that leverages Zillow data. We find strong evidence of a gender gap in patent sales, and find it poses a cruel irony for female entrepreneurs. While greater wealth of female entrepreneurs improves their likelihood of patent sale, increasing wealth simultaneously expands the gender gap, making female entrepreneurs increasingly worse off relative to male entrepreneurs except at high affluence. These results underscore the complexity of the challenges facing female entrepreneurs seeking to commercialize using patent sales. Managerial Summary Are female entrepreneurs disadvantaged in monetizing their inventions, relative to male entrepreneurs? Our study, which examines invention commercialization through selling patents, suggests the answer is yes. We begin by evidencing the gender gap in patent sales, showing that female inventors are 41.7% less likely to sell a patent than male inventors. We then investigate whether an entrepreneur′s personal wealth—a financial asset that also represents valuable intangible resources like network connections and competency signals—can help to close it. We find that wealth is a double‐edged sword. Although greater wealth of female entrepreneurs improves their likelihood of patent sale, it can concurrently widen the gap, making them increasingly worse off versus male entrepreneurs. We offer concrete recommendations for closing the gender gap in patent sales.