It is well established that more diversity leads to increased profits. But how do the profits increase exactly?
“Increased profits” is a broad statement and even the word “profits” can take a few definitions. The focus here is specific to innovation and how that is increased through diverse environments. Further leading to improvements to the bottom line.
Diverse View On Diversity
The simple definition of Diversity (Diverse) means to be very different. Better minds than mine may have to clarify that some time soon. However, for this writing that simple definition holds true.
Diversity is not exclusive to race and gender as they tend to be the more popular (often appropriately so) categories. For the sake of innovation, it should heavily consider social and economic backgrounds, age, disabilities, and more.
Frankly, if we take a global view, are there enough white women and men serving on executive teams of Asian based companies? Are there enough women serving in a leadership capacity in the UAE (opined as #1 for worst gender equality)?
The point is, take a hard look at your current environment and move towards making it diverse. This is where you have the largest immediate impact and it relates specifically towards the betterment of your company.
Innovation Bias
Be it conscious or not, biases can kill your progress (more about biases here).
Applied to innovation, specifically to tech, it’s a guaranteed barrier. Let’s pretend you have a team born and raised in Silicon Valley with well-off families (nothing wrong with that). What prompt or motivator would lead them to build automated hardware that seeks and builds water wells in parts of the world that need it most? Without diversity, projects like this may only be prompted by altruistic players with varying motivators.
Using the same scenario, if you have a team that include persons who really understand that water sourcing and its construction is a critical global issue due to their experience or their families, then the likelihood for a sustainable solution will increase.
The examples are never ending. Can a paraplegic coder develop software that prompts individuals in need guidance through various public and private buildings? Ideally, that coder helped a blind person walk through a random office tower in Chicago through sensors and a mobile app. These are priority issues for those who have these experiences.
Diversify the team, watch innovation flourish.
Fostering an Environment
Reminder, more innovation, more profits. See below based on a Strategy& report.
These are not numbers to dismiss and hopefully I outlined a way that this can be done above. Lastly, you don’t have to come up with all of the ideas. A major contributing effort is to foster innovation by creating the right environment.
Further reading from HBS can be found here. It highlights several things including creating the space for it as well as enabling and supporting risk taking.
According to a recent study by Accenture, 63 percent of companies are undergoing disruption, and 44 percent are highly susceptible to it in the future. Will you be proactive about managing and pivoting what is likely eventual? Let me know what you think.