Can Diverse and Inclusive Crowds Increase Innovation by 6x?

The research is clear: diversity drives innovation in the office and in your crowdsourced initiatives. Companies that prioritize diversity and inclusion have access to a greater range of perspectives and experiences, which leads to more creative solutions and faster growth.

Leaders play an important role in creating a culture that celebrates and encourages different backgrounds, ideas, and contributions. From your leadership team to middle management, employees, partners, shareholders, and the crowds you turn to for market research and crowdsourced innovation.

By fostering an environment of inclusion, companies can unlock the potential of their teams and crowds to drive business growth.

Reframing Diversity as an Asset

Too often diversity is framed as little more than an ideal HR objective, but research shows that diversity is an asset for every organization.

Diverse teams and crowds:

• Bring a variety of perspectives and experiences that drive innovation.
• Make better decisions and have improved problem-solving capabilities.
• Provide a better understanding of customers and their needs.
• Provide insights and experience that can expand market share.
• Are often more positive and productive and have higher retention rates.
• Democratize every process ensuring everyone feels part of something bigger.

Beyond your internal team, innovation is an increasingly collaborative process that leverages external subject matter experts—and the input of those you plan to serve. Even when collaborating or researching with those you plan to serve, cast a wide net beyond your primary demographic.

The Diversity and Inclusion Revolution report from Deloitte finds that diverse collaborators are:

• 2 times more likely to meet or exceed financial targets.
• 3 times more likely to be high performing.
• 6 times more likely to be innovative and agile.
• 8 times more likely to achieve business outcomes.
• Minimize risk by an average of 30%.

Types of Diversity

Diversity is more than meets the eye and requires top-down representation. Your recruitment and innovation partners can help you curate an unbiased screening process. This ensures that you have a wider range of candidates and crowds to choose from.

• Gender diversity—today this goes beyond male and female to trans and non-binary.
• Sexual orientation—thinking beyond heteronormative isn’t only inclusive, it is empowering and profitable.
• Cultural diversity—often confused with ethnicity, culture embraces everyone from everywhere.
• Ethnic diversity—ensure your team looks like the world we live in and the communities you serve.
• Religious diversity—ensure you have products and services that align with faith-based needs.
• Age diversity—regardless of the demographic you serve, the needs of every age must be considered.
• Disability—one of the most under-represented perspectives providing both internal and external benefits.
• Socioeconomic background—the challenges that face all earning demographics provide unique perspectives.
• Hobbies—your products may cater to specific hobbies but is likely to have a variety of experiential benefits.
• Life experiences—anything from level of education to skill sets, military service, terminal illness, living overseas, and more.
• Personality—there are at least 16 distinguishable personality types that enrich the innovation process in unique ways.
• General worldview/opinions—the objective here is to include all walks of life to ensure all-encompassing input.

Beyond Diversity to Inclusion

Sourcing the diverse demographics above isn’t a one-and-done solution. To unlock the innovation that drives market growth, you must also embrace inclusivity. What this looks like in your innovation process is that everyone has equal access to resources and the time and space to be heard.

Deloitte defines successful inclusion as feeling:

• Confident and inspired
• Fair and respected
• Value and belonging
• Safe and open
• Empowered and growing

Inclusive teams and collaborators deliver:

• 17% increased in team performance.
• 20% increased in the quality of decision-making.
• 29% increased in team collaboration.

Worried that too many perspectives will be too overwhelming?

This is a common concern, so keep in mind that:

• First and foremost, we all have more in common than not.
• Secondly, even in homogenous groups, not everyone will have the same thought process or perspective.
• Thirdly, our nuanced differences can be pure gold as they deliver a competitive advantage!

View your diverse perspectives as a challenge to think both bigger and broader and smaller and more refined. Either way, with the right mindset and a safe place to share—your crowd will deliver insights you wouldn’t have accessed otherwise.

The Keys to Your Competitive Edge

The statistics above are too impressive to ignore, but there’s more. In today’s rapidly changing and competitive marketplace, organizations need to embrace diversity and inclusion to remain competitive. This may include crowdsourcing in the different regions of the world you serve. Better yet, if your key competition has yet to leverage inclusion—it gives you an edge.

Additionally, diverse teams are better equipped to respond to change and have a stronger understanding of consumer needs. Diverse crowds are poised to recognize new and different ideas and appreciate unmet market needs. Even with a tenured and accomplished in-house team, crowdsourcing takes things to a whole other level.

How to Engage Your Crowds

Modern technology makes it easier than ever to crowdsource innovation from everywhere in the world. You can even access multiple crowds for the same project or for multiple projects.

Your process must be agile as to not disrupt the organic nature of brainstorming and innovation. While you may have objectives or creative constraints in place, there should always be enough flexibility to empower your crowd to add maximum value.

Your crowdsourcing strategies can include traditional marketing research groups and consumer feedback channels but should also include software designed specifically for crowdsourced innovation.

Innovation software democratizes your crowdsourced perspectives and gathers your data in an organized manner. With IdeaScale’s software, you can also perform an innovation maturity assessment, curate a proven strategy to scale the ideation you move forward with, and more.

Ready to Crowdsource in a Manner That Is Diverse and Inclusive?

If you are ready to implement crowdsourcing, take a more strategic approach to crowdsourcing, or learn more about the benefits of innovation software—we invite you to reach out to IdeaScale today.