THE ROLE OF EDUCATION IN INCREASING MARKET AND NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT PERFORMANCE IN THE CONTEXT OF FEMALE ENTREPRENEURSHIP: THE CASE OF CROATIA

Female entrepreneurship is a rapidly expanding academic topic in the field of entrepreneurship. Many researchers claim that female entrepreneurship represents a new stream of economic growth because higher inclusion of women in entrepreneurial activities generates new jobs, enables the exploitation of new business opportunities, and provides new perspectives and solutions to managerial, organizational and business problems in general. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to further explore the impact of gender, experience and education on the entrepreneurial performance. More specifically, by using the linear regression analysis the paper will explore direct and moderating effects of gender, experience and education on the market and new product development in the context of Croatian SMEs. The results of this study did not confirm any positive effects of gender, experience, or education on market development and new product development. Moreover, the results did not confirm the existence of moderation effects between gender and experience on market development, nor on new product development. On the other hand, this study produced a very interesting finding, that the relationship between education and market development, and education and new product development is moderated in such a way that it is stronger for women than for men. This means that business performance, in this case considered as market and new product development, is higher with the increase in level of education among female entrepreneurs. Therefore, these findings provide another layer of evidence to policy makers that tailor-made educational business programs are more than necessary and useful to prepare women for entrepreneurial projects, which in turn brings many benefits to the national economy and society as a whole.