- Dori Tunstall, Dean of Design, OCAD University, on BIPOC entrepreneurship (and Black Panther!)
- Malavika Kumaran, Senior Associate, Research, MaRS Data Catalyst, on women in tech
- Ken Doyle, Executive Director of TechAccess Canada on later-stage R&D and diversity of activity
- Dominique Bérubé, Vice-President, Research Programs, SSHRC will address the role of humanities and social sciences in addressing grand challenges and multidisciplinary research.
Here is the summary of our panel:
What is inclusive innovation? How do we
achieve it?
These are important questions to ask as we
continue to pivot into a knowledge based global economy. Inclusive innovation
is a worthy outcome to strive for. But in order to achieve it, we need to
ensure that the inputs are inclusive. We can usefully plot this into a logic
model, which provides a way for understanding the relationships between the
various inputs, activities and outputs that will help us achieve the outcome(s)
commensurate with the focus on inclusive innovation.
When we look at innovation through this
lens and work back from the goal of inclusive innovation we can see that there
are gaps in the material conditions that would support the outcome of inclusive
innovation. Innovation inputs usefully include the pipeline of science and
technology and research and development (S&T and R&D), funding, people,
culture, activities: those conditions and material supports that are put into
play against any innovation effort. For the purposes of our logic model we can
usefully who is involved in innovation, what do they do, and what happens as a
result.
·
Actors: ensuring that
decolonization, diversity and equity lens is applied to all people engaging in
innovation related activities – we want to ensure that the inputs to innovation
are inclusive.
·
Activities: what activities are
prioritized? We need to focus on diverse activities across the span of research
and development (R&D), the disciplines needed to stand up multidisciplinary
effort, and the complementary skills and competencies needed to realize outputs
and outcomes.
·
Outputs: what is produced that
will reflect diverse inputs? What happens if we only count what is easy to
count? The OECD’s innovation categories are useful here.
·
Outcomes: an inclusive society
with a growth-focused economy in a global environment.
Understanding each of these in turn will
help us rethink how we approach innovation, what activities we prioritize and
why, and what outputs and outcomes we can expect to see.
Innovation Actors
By ensuring that we support decolonization,
diversity and equity we can help to create the conditions for inclusive
innovation. This means ensuring that we have gender diversity and parity, and
equal representation from diverse cultural groups, in order to ensure that we
have equal representation on the inputs and ideas that promote and formulate
innovation. The historical conditions that have created baked-in biases have
resulted in a politics of exclusion that we are only recently starting to
unpack. Calling for inclusive innovation compels us to engage in decolonizing our
approach to social inclusion. We can ensure that everyone can access education
and therefore be a full, equal and meaningful participant in innovation
activities.
Innovation Activities
Innovation activities also benefit from a
variety of skills and competencies. These are most often utilized and deployed
in concert with complementary skills, disciplines, points of view. To achieve
inclusive innovation we must see the actors not only through a diversity and
equity lens, but also diversity in the skills, competencies, disciplines, and
credentials required at each step in the innovation process.
The activities of innovation also assume a
balanced approach across the spectrum of research – from Basic Research,
through Applied Research and Experimental Development.[1] Complementarity across the spectrum of S&T and R&D requires
innovation systems to leverage multiple points of contact in order to achieve
innovation outcomes, including those disciplines and activities in the
experimental development end of the spectrum.
Innovation Outputs
The full spectrum of innovation defined by
the OECD includes product, process, organizational and marketing innovation.
Each of these represents a key set of social, cultural and economic indicators,
with assumed activities and outputs:
- Product innovation: A
good or service that is new or significantly improved. This includes
significant improvements in technical specifications, components and
materials, software in the product, user friendliness or other functional
characteristics.
- Process innovation: A
new or significantly improved production or delivery method. This includes
significant changes in techniques, equipment and/or software.
- Marketing innovation:
A new marketing method involving significant changes in product design or
packaging, product placement, product promotion or pricing.
- Organisational innovation: A new organisational method in business practices, workplace
organisation or external relations. [2]
The types of activities are contingent on the
innovation category. In a recent op-ed Beckton, Irvine and McDonald state that
“mainstream networks, incubators and accelerators often don't cater to female
entrepreneurs and the industries in which they operate”, which compounds
another issue they identify related to innovation outputs: “a marketplace where
key participants still tend to define innovation in terms of technology and
goods. The result is a situation where innovations that flow from other parts
of the marketplace – innovations often created by women running service
companies – are not seen in a similar, positive light.”[3]
This is an important point.
Innovation Outcomes
Inclusive innovation means focusing not
just on simple to count measures such as patents and publications, but on the
full spectrum of innovation outputs.
·
We need to ask: whose
perspective has been left out of innovation?
·
What activities and disciplines
are needed to facilitate innovation?
·
What outputs result from these
inputs?
When we look at innovation through this
lens and work back from the goal of inclusive innovation we can see that there
are gaps in the material conditions that would support the outcome of inclusive
innovation.
[1] OECD Frascati Manual 2.1.64. See http://www.oecd.org/sti/inno/Frascati-Manual.htm.
The OECD uses the terms Science and Technology (how national governments
understand the public production of knowledge) and Industrial Research and
Development (how national governments understand private sector R&D and
innovation related activities.
