A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure to meet Karen Souza, D&I Partner at Innovate UK KTN.  I was excited to hear about their focus on Inclusive Innovation, and immediately asked her to join us for our next TransFIRe EDI Working Group Session.  Our EDI Working Group brings together people who are advocating and leading change for EDI in their businesses and industries, from the TransFIRe research community and our industry partners.  Our industry participants represent production, research and development, and HR roles, and I was excited to bring the Inclusive Innovation discussion into this forum.

Karen Souza

Roll forwards a few weeks, and our session did not disappoint.  Karen explained how UKRI’s vision is to work with partners to shape a dynamic, diverse and inclusive system of research and innovation in the UK.

While the UK has incredible diverse talent, it is recognised that there are significant barriers preventing people from entering and succeeding in innovation.  Yet bringing EDI to the approach to innovation will deliver greater success for businesses, help meet skills needs for industry sectors, and bring positive societal and economic impacts for the UK.

Karen shared some sobering consequences of exclusion in innovation, ranging through AI bias causing 80% of Black people’s mortgage applications to be denied, health risks due to gender bias in medical research, disparate car safety risks meaning women are 73% more likely to be injured in a crash, and failures in algorithmic photo verification disproportionately impacting people of minoritised ethnicities.  Disabled people experience accessibility barriers in both physical and digital realms, and it is estimated that businesses lose around £2 billion per month by ignoring their needs.

Innovate UK defines Inclusive Innovation to be a product, process or service that centres on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.  That means it may be:

  • Designed to support a specific demographic
  • Designed to be accessible for everyone
  • Scaling existing practices to a new market

Karen shared some inspiring and diverse examples of innovations, including several that have been supported by the Inclusive Innovation Award.  One product I spotted that I know well are OXO Good Grip kitchen tools, which were invented in response to the founder realising his wife’s arthritis was causing her difficulty with peeling vegetables.  I myself have no difficulties with my hands and also find them much easier to use, showing how universal design enables innovators to make products that are better for everyone.  Other innovations spanned medical, digital, power and more.

Following our usual EDI Working Group format, we leave at least half of the session for in-depth discussion, so we had plenty of time to explore the topic together.

One line of discussion was about some of the product fails when innovation has not been inclusive.  It can so easily come about when innovators use only themselves as the reference point to understand user needs.  It’s important to be thinking about diversity and including diverse stakeholders all the way through the research, design and testing process.

Another participant shared a lovely example of where the Foundation Industries have done this well – with ring pulls on metal cans.  This may seem a simple feature, yet they can be used by an abled-bodied person and arthritic person alike – while not being so easy to use that a toddler who may cause themselves injury can do so.  In this case, it also highlights how redesign, for example to produce thinner cans, must also follow inclusive practices to ensure that the product remains both accessible and safe.

We also talked about one of Karen’s exclusion examples, that bricks are typically too big for women’s hands.  I wondered, what would be the consequences if they were to be made smaller?  I learned that for environmental sustainability, this is a bad move.  Cement production is one of the world’s largest carbon dioxide emitters (8% of global CO2 emissions), but smaller bricks would mean more joining material, i.e., cement.  The industry is therefore actually moving towards larger bricks for less cement usage.  This also poses a problem for men to pick up bricks, and in fact, even with today’s brick sizes, the average bricklayer has to retire ages 50 due to the physical issues caused by the job.  Rather than solve the brick carrying issue with smaller bricks, solution areas may be better found in technology and tools to assist carrying and laying the bricks.

And with that our conversation moved to the importance to reframe questions, and what better way than to bring in diverse perspectives.  Great ideas can come from anywhere, and we must not let organisational hierarchies or preconceived expectations of people get in the way of recognising those diverse insights.

If you are interested to know more about our EDI Working Group, please visit the contact us page to get in touch!

Written by Jo Stansfield