When we were at the USASBE conference last weekend presenting the ACTiVATE program for an award, one woman stood up and said that she could not imagine enrolling in a woman-only program. She was a bench PhD and felt that she had learned a great deal by ‘toughing it out’ in a man’s world. I explained to her that having built my business in a very male-dominated industry I could understand her point, but from my experiences with the program through the last 3 years, I have seen a real benefit to the single-gender environment. It may not be for everyone, but for some women it made all the difference in deciding to join and succeeding in the program. Vivian Armor, one of the program’s Primary Investigators and the Director for the Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship at UMBC, then pointed out that at our recent recruiting sessions, she has been asking if it mattered that the course was for women only. About half agreed that it was essential. By the end of the program, however, 100% of the participants have consistently stated that the single-gender environment was important. What changed?

The ACTiVATE program focuses on mid-career women who have already been out in the “man’s world” and been successful in it. That would lead us to believe, then, that being around all women might not be so critical. Some, like the woman mentioned above, actually feel it would be detrimental. I have to confess: several years ago I actually left a Business Roundtable because it was all women and I wanted to get male insight and advice. My perspective is different now.

While I agree that women can learn a lot from working and collaborating with men, one of the key factors in the success of this women-only entrepreneurship training was that having a single-gender environment is safe. It provides an atmosphere in which women who are already accomplished and used to being tops in their field can experiment and take risks as they learned new skills. While there are some people (insane as they are) who enjoy the discomfort of trying something new, most avoid it or at least shy away from doing so publicly. Starting a business definitely takes you out of your comfort zone. It is very different than the corporate environment and you have to rely, at least in the beginning, completely on yourself. It is not for the faint of heart, motivation, or energy.

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I received an interesting e-mail from a fellow woman entrepreneur the other day that got me thinking. She was attending a trade show she hoped to one day (soon!) be exhibiting at and came across a company who appeared to be a competitor. She was devastated. Before that, she had thought she was the only one hitting her target market with the type of products she was creating. Now, she knew differently.

My first thought was that it is not uncommon for an inventor to think their product is the only one of its kind and more often than not, it’s not. Ideas seem to float around the universe with many inventions hitting the scene at the same time from two different and unconnected sources. Take the integrated circuit for example. Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments invented it in 1959 and then a few months later and completely unassociated, Robert Noyce, an engineer at Fairchild, did the same thing. Strange coincidence, isn’t it?

The other thing I realized is that competition does one of two things. It either motivates you or it completely takes the wind out of your sails. Some people view competition as a challenge and get really fired up by it. That’s great! Unfortunately I have seen many entrepreneurs who are afraid of competition when they really shouldn’t be. Think about it: if there isn’t any competition in a particular market, then either your product is so novel that no one has truly figured it out yet or else there isn’t a market. Where you see other companies selling the same thing it can actually be good news (providing the companies are successful). The truth about competition is that is means there are customers who are willing to buy. That’s a good thing!

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