In her new book, Mary Godwyn, a sociologist at Babson College in Waltham, Mass., and her colleague Donna Stoddard, an associate professor of information, investigate why minority women start new businesses at four times the rate of Caucasian men and women, and how these enterprises innovate and differ from the mainstream.

“Minority women are in an especially good position to critique conventional business practices and to refashion business methods,” observes Godwyn. “In entrepreneurship we want people who question expert knowledge and conventional wisdom. We want people who solve problems creatively and find solutions no one else has thought about.”

Minority Women Entrepreneurs: How Outside Status Can Lead to Better Business Practice, by Mary Godwyn and Donna Stoddard (Greenleaf Publishing and Stanford University Press, 2011).

This article was featured in the May 2011 issue of Working Mother Research Institute’s email newsletter, Working Mother Research Institute Essentials. To read additional stories from that issue, see the related content section below. To subscribe to Working Mother Research Institute Essentials, register on the newsletter page of this website.