PODCAST: Profitable Innovation Linked to Women In Leadership
Increased innovation, the engine that keeps companies alive, is often touted as a benefit of diversity and inclusion. Yet many companies still struggle to make the changes needed to achieve diversity and inclusion.
In a 2017 Ted Talk, Rocio Lorenzo, a telecommunications and media advisor, shares the results of research she conducted with the University of Munich. They asked companies how many of their innovative products made money. Then they asked how diverse the company was. It turned out that more diverse companies made more money on innovative products.
But, it wasn’t enough just to have a hand full of women in high positions. Profitable innovation was linked to companies where at least 20 percent of the leadership was female. These companies didn’t view hiring and promoting women as social justice. They recognized that it could be an important business strategy and treated it as such.