Abstract: The strong externality and social influence of innovations make it have profound gender impact. At present, the gender impact assessment (GIA) focuses on analyzing policy texts by counterfactual analysis method and analyzing policy implementation before and after comparison, which needs to be expanded urgently in terms of analyzing objects. On the one hand, it is emphasized and applied to be a policy analysis tool, which lacks gender impact assessment on real innovation outcomes. On the other hand, it lacks the consideration of process, including creating ideas, designing, manufacturing, commercialization and social construction. Due to gendered social construction and diversified forms of innovations, traditional gender impact assessment which is used to be a policy evaluation tool, has been unable to fully apply to the current era of "innovation driven development". In view of this, this study proposes "Gender Impact Assessment in Innovation Management" and its toolkit. Gender impact assessment in innovation management is an assessment tool which is able to adapt to diversified innovation achievements such as scientific and technological innovations, product innovations, service innovations, policy innovations, governance innovations, etc. Being different from previous gender impact assessment policy analysis tools, gender impact assessment in innovation management is based on the process perspective, which extends it to both real and non-real areas, covers the whole process, including screening, design, review, value realization and social impact, and has a wide range of applications.In order to ensure the logicality, comprehensiveness and systematicness of the evaluation process, this study designs gender impact assessment and its toolkits for real and non-real products, services and other innovation projects. The gender impact assessment contains mainly three parts. (1) The input-output-outcome model is a visual expression of innovative achievements, which is distinct from technical documents. It can achieve visualization and popularization as far as possible so as to facilitate multi-party communication in the process of impact assessment. (2) The impact assessment matrix is based on five criteria, that is, technology evaluation and foresight, preventive principle, ethical principle, government & stakeholder participation and public mobilization & multi-party dialogue. It can deeply analyze innovative achievements from the perspectives of methods and products design. (3) Spatial recurrence matrix recursively extents the impact scope to innovation activities and achievements on the level of  individual, family, work and social space, which involves economic activities, social culture, policy and legal fields, in order to sort out the impact of innovation achievements more systematically. Subsequently, taking the market exploration of assistive devices for disabled elderly as an example, the gender impact assessment was applied to the industry.For the disabled elderly, sexual differences will lead to differences in their physiological needs, while gender differences will lead to differences in social needs for assistive devices. There are differences in height, weight and palm size between men and women, thus, it is necessary to extend the size range of appliances. For the caregivers of the disabled elderly, women are mainly responsible for caring for the elderly in families. In the design of assistive devices, gender differences need to be addressed. (1) Reducing the self-weight of the appliances or increasing the rated power of the machinery can reduce the physical burden of female caregivers. (2) Increasing the private shelter facilities in the design of appliances can improve the convenience of heterosexual care. Embedding sex and gender differences in research and development of assistive devices is conducive to improving the sense of use and practicability and promoting market promotion. In terms of the results of input-output-outcome analysis, the main purpose of exploring the market of assistive devices for disabled elderly is to encourage the government and enterprises to develop the market of assistive devices in order to solve the low utilization rate of assistive devices among disabled elderly. The economic empowerment of the elderly has its particularities: they cannot participate in economic activities again, are in a disadvantaged position in the family and society and cannot make purchase decisions. Therefore, the target market and the way of market exploration are special. The conclusions of requirement mining for auxiliary devices are as follows. From the perspective of demand differences, female's visual, hearing, chewing and excretion disabilities are significantly higher than male's, and the demand for assistive devices is greater. From the level of demand, the lowest level of demand for the disabled elderly to use assistive devices is the body function compensation. Therefore, the design of assistive devices should investigate the physiological and psychological needs of the disabled elderly by gender, and use them to improve the devices. In addition, many assistive device operators are family caregivers and professional caregivers. They should be recruited to participate in questionnaires or market research to understand their inconvenience and key issues in the process of care. Thirdly, when developing and producing auxiliary devices, we should carefully measure the type, degree, weight, height and arm length of the disabled and compare them by sex, so as to increase the flexibility of the design specifications and adapt the shape of the elderly of different genders through simple disassembly and telescopic operation. In the operation and promotion of assistive devices, we need to pay attention to: a. In the family purchase decision-making, the decision makers and payers of whether and what kind of assistive devices to buy are often women (wives, daughters, daughter-in-law, etc.); b. Family care is mainly undertaken by women, who are also the actual operators of most assistive devices. So, in the exploration of the market of assistive devices for disabled elderly, women are key target objects.Gender impact assessment continues the critical construction and reflexive thinking, which comes from scientific research and innovation, on gender dimension. In addition, it covers the process of innovation management, innovation achievements and their gender impacts on society. It is an important assessment tool to promote the ethical value orientation in the field of innovation management and realize the social acceptability of innovation achievements. Therefore, it is conducive for policymakers, managers, innovators, stakeholders, the public to correctly understand and objectively evaluate the gender impact of innovations, emphasize the externality of innovations, and then make innovations shoulder the social responsibility of gender equality and benefit society.

Key words: GIA, science and technology evaluation, policy evaluation, gendered innovation