Connecting Innovation and Inclusion
Keynotes
- Diversity is driving a significant part of innovation and becoming a critical component on a global scale. This means senior executives must recognize that a diverse set of backgrounds, perspectives, and experience is vital to innovation and ideation.
- Encouraging inclusion and diversity will attract and retain the top talent for any organization. According to Forbes Insight, nearly all its respondents identify that though most companies have inclusion and diversity in place, not all have the same plan. A third allows regional deviation; half have different strategies that address regional needs or cultural differences.
- The responsibility for the success of the company’s diversity and inclusion lies with senior management.
Diversity and Inclusion, The Formula for Success
It is becoming a grounded truth that heterogeneous firms perform better than their homogenous counterparts. According to Deloitte’s 2018 research, organisations with inclusive culture demonstrate six times more agility and innovation, eight times more than likely achieve better business results and perform twice better in their financial targets than organisations with less diversity. Another report shows that diverse companies are 45% more likely to report annual market-share growth and 70% more likely to enter a new market. According to Credit Suisse Research Institute’s 2020 report, firms with one or more women board members will have higher average ROI and better average growth than firms with a male-only board. Yet, we see 77% of S&P 500 company boards have two-thirds men, and 2% have more than 50% women.
In recent days, there has been much noise on inclusion and diversity, enough to ask questions like:
- What does it mean to be diverse?
- What is the business case for diversity and inclusion?
- How does inclusion make any team innovative?
- What does diversity entail?
However, the idea of diversity is rapidly evolving as it is no longer about building a heterogeneous workforce and creating innovative products and business practices that place that business as a competitive advantage in any marketplace. Executives are beginning to understand that to stay relevant across global platforms, it is essential to have a diverse and inclusive workforce that drives innovation, guides business strategies, and fosters creativity.
Today, diversity efforts are gaining strides in many companies. This success is not far-fetched since diverse voices mean new perspectives, new products, and out-of-the-box thinking.
Innovative and Diverse Teams are Exceptional
Inclusion can take several forms. Some could be by age, race, gender, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, and for others, it could be by education, professionalism, disabilities, and personal experiences. However, one of the kinds of inclusion many companies are introducing is cognitive diversity and gender inclusion. This means companies bring people with different viewpoints and thinking patterns, irrespective of their gender, to form a mix of innovation power.
Setting the Right Foundation
It is essential to know that even with an inclusive management team, companies must realise that it is vital to take advantage of leaders’ unique viewpoints to have the proper inclusive foundation.
For instance, L’Oreal confirms that it is crucial to understand the value and insight that an inclusive workforce will achieve by building consumer brands and offerings that cater to specific ethnic offerings. In their words, it is not enough to have an inclusive workforce if you do not put that talent to use. A practical example is a research project that focuses on the foundation for women of color. Balanda Atis, the group leader of the research and innovation at L’Oreal USA, confirms that it is difficult to get the perfect foundation appropriate for her skin tone as a woman with darker skin. This revelation brought to light many consumers in the same situation as Balanda. Hence, to create a sustainable business model, L’Oreal has chosen to include many consumers by widening the product bracket.
Imagine L’Oreal never had Balanda; they would keep creating products that are not applicable for all their audience.
This means inclusivity must allow strategic emphasis on open communication and culture for an open invitation to new ideas. It is easy to discuss diversity, but a passive approach is often considered as many organisations still have a long-established culture of homogeneity. Hence, organisations must be firm and proactive about fostering viewpoints and perspectives, which go far beyond the hiring process.
Connecting Inclusion and Innovation Is Critical to Success
With every passing second, the business environment is getting more competitive and complex. This means organisations must continue to create innovative products and services.
Business executives must learn to own the plan by assessing its starting point, establishing specific goals, and creating a roadmap with a transparent accountability process and milestones. For a long time, there has been the idea that diversity fosters innovation. The evidence heavily declared that organisations that actively increase diversity and implement the right enabling factors perform better. These organizations’ stories include better ideas and a greater likelihood of winning products and services in the market.
Yet, even as diversity and inclusion continue to drive innovation, organisations still struggle with internal and external challenges in implementing these policies. However, looking forward, organisations can keep their eye on the prize and strive to support diversity as the top of their priorities, which will help them come out like the competition.
