Equality=Innovation: How a Culture of Equality Drives Innovation
IT IS WELL DOCUMENTED that in this age of widespread disruption, companies must innovate continuously, creating new markets, experiences, products, services, content or processes. So, what can leaders do to encourage innovation? It’s about more than recruiting the brightest minds. While having the best talent is clearly an asset, people need the right culture in order to flourish.
We have found that a culture of equality — the same kind of workplace environment that helps everyone advance to higher positions — is a powerful multiplier of innovation and growth. This means that building a culture of equality is not just an ethical imperative, it is also a business priority. Put simply, if organizations want to thrive, they have to ‘get to equal’.
The power of a workplace culture of equality to drive employees’ innovation mindset — their willingness and ability to innovate — is strong. In our research, it had more impact than age or gender and led to an increase in the innovation mindset in all industries and all countries. In fact, we found that the innovation mindset is six times higher in the most-equal cultures than in the least-equal ones.
Innovation also equals economic potential. Among the more than 18,000 employees in 27 countries surveyed, we found that people are more willing and able to innovate in faster-growing economies and in geographies with higher labour-productivity growth. And the stakes are enormous: We calculate that global gross domestic product would increase by up to US$ 8 trillion by 2028 if the innovation mindset in all countries was raised by 10 per cent.
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