Innovating for Diversity

CHAPTER 10Final Thoughts and Next Steps

Throughout the book, we have presented firsthand accounts of how leaders across industries, functions, and organizational size have applied innovation principles to launch and accelerate their DEI efforts, building strong, inclusive environments where all employees thrive.

While we hope these stories are inspiring, you may wonder how you can take the learnings from the case studies and apply them in your own organization.

In this final chapter, we will outline the key takeaways from our interviews to encourage a series of provocative conversations in your organization and offer guidance for applying innovation principles to your own real-world DEI practices.

Key Concept: Innovating for diversity does not follow an established formula. Taking the insights, inspiration, and lessons learned from the previous chapters we offer a set of questions for you to explore as a starting point to your own DEI innovation journey.

Lessons in Innovating for Diversity

In our research and through our conversations with leaders at several forward-thinking organizations, we discovered several common themes across their approaches for diversity innovation. Chief among them are the following:

• CEO and C-level support is not enough

  Visible CEO and C-level support is necessary but not sufficient for making diversity an actionable priority. Public proclamations that announce ambitious goals for a more diverse and inclusive workplace can galvanize other leaders ...