Keeping our paths to innovation open

International Women’s Day is March 8, offering us a day to think about how we can accelerate action for women’s equality. As a woman of color in both science and business, I think about this topic daily. 

In the last few months, it seems you can’t open a paper, scroll through a newsfeed, or turn on the TV without hearing about efforts to dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, or take away progress women and minorities have made in achieving management or leadership positions.

Regardless of where you stand on diversity, it’s impossible to ignore a simple truth: diversity drives innovation. It does so by challenging conventional thinking, encouraging fresh ideas, and promoting creative problem-solving. It also allows us to innovate products and services that add more value by reflecting the needs and preferences of all segments of our population. This ultimately leads to greater opportunities and revenue generation for businesses.

At NextCorps, we see this play out almost daily in our interactions with the entrepreneurs and manufacturers we support through our many programs like Luminate, and with the universities, vendors, and community organizations we collaborate with to help advance innovation.  

I won’t bore you with a bunch of statistics on the many well-documented benefits of diversity. Rather, I’d like to share one of my personal stories that illustrates the power of including a wide range of perspectives, experiences, and ways of thinking in developing innovative solutions.  

In the late 1980s I worked for Chrysler. The corporation had just bought American Motors Corp. with the goal of increasing sales by extending their vehicle lines to more types of consumers. The engineering team I worked with was responsible for looking at how to alter the Jeep. 

At that time, the Jeep was an on- and off-road, 4×4 vehicle touted as a lighter “sport utility vehicle,” but it was still pretty rugged. As a joke, my boss threw me the keys and asked me to drive the vehicle around to the back lot so we could start our work. As the only woman on the team, I’m sure he thought I didn’t know how to drive a manual transmission and that it would lead to a good laugh. When I came back minutes later without the Jeep, everyone assumed that was the reason. 

Now, I can assure you I was quite skilled in driving a manual vehicle. What I couldn’t do was reach the pedals to shift and see over the dashboard at the same time. I’m 5 foot 4 inches tall, so I’m average height. With some of our action movie stars like Tom Cruise coming in at only 5 foot 6, this demonstrated a big problem, regardless of sex. 

My boss and the entire team got their laugh that day. But we also got a priceless innovation moment. If the Jeep was to be redesigned as a family vehicle to ignite sales, women and men under six feet would have to be able to buy the car, too. This led us to do a detailed ergonomic study and redesign the vehicle, making the model the most capable and accessible SUV of its time. Sales soared. All because we designed it with diverse users in mind. 

Given that women today control or influence 85 percent of consumer purchase decisions, yet only comprise 29 percent of the STEM workforce globally (in 146 nations), this story should serve as a cautionary message to all businesses. When you create and sell something, you need to make sure you accurately reflect and hit your market. Getting to this insight is a lot harder to do if you’re only looking at what’s relevant to your customers from the outside.

When organizations choose to take their focus off of diversity, equity and inclusion, they may be less likely to actively promote and support the advancement of women, as well as other minorities, into positions that will be key to their business’s continued discovery, innovation and future. This will lead to stagnation on multiple levels, not just in progress toward equality, but in business growth and financial success for everyone involved—from owners and employees to the communities in which they both work and do business. 

Industry researchers also recognize this stark reality. In a study done by Gartner, the firm found that “75% of companies with frontline decision-making teams reflecting a diverse and inclusive culture exceed their financial targets.” The study also found that “gender-diverse and inclusive teams outperformed gender-homogenous, less inclusive teams by 50%, on average.” Those numbers and impact are hard to ignore.

So, the question for all of us now is: Are we really willing to close off our proven paths to innovation?

Sujatha Ramanujan is managing director and chief investment officer of Luminate, a startup accelerator administered by NextCorps, that is focused on advancing next-generation optics-, photonics-, and imaging-enabled companies.