Bidiversity

We were going to run a story from FastCompany today, but a couple of comments on the article made us think twice. While it’s great to support women in business, diversity is about more than just gender. As Paul Lamb says in this piece for ComputerWorld - Young, affluent innovators come up with things that appeal to – surprise! -young, affluent urban dwellers

Lamb identifies a trend that is often overlooked – that innovators, particularly in the technology space, fit a very narrow profile. They mostly come from more affluent backgrounds, are well educated and are rarely minorities. Many have gone to well-known business schools and colleges and fit comfortably into the mainstream business culture found in places like Silicon Valley.

It is no surprise then that much of the gadgetry and Web services leaping from the minds of talented young innovators are geared toward young, well-educated, affluent white kids — people just like them. When was the last time you heard of a groundbreaking tech product targeting seniors, the disabled or young black men?

That is not to say that people who have not lived the plight of the underserved cannot innovate on their behalf. If that were the case, we wouldn’t have online microlending platforms like Kiva.org or the text messaging donation services that raised so many millions for the victims of the Haiti earthquakes. But it does beg the question of what remains undiscovered as a result of the particular world view of those primarily steering the innovation ship?

So how can we create a more inclusive and diverse engine for innovation — one that could benefit everyone?

Here are some things we could establish that would help:

• A way to identify, aggregate and share under-the-radar innovations found in overlooked communities, similar to the Honeybee Network in India.
• Community-based innovation centers and incubators centered in poor neighborhoods, community centers, and churches – not just in IT company labs and on the laptops of developers.
• Venture funds run by and targeting more diverse communities, including minorities, the disabled and seniors.
  
• Collaborations between community service organizations and techies to develop locally relevant tools and services.
• The training of low-income and underserved individuals to both leverage existing tools and to become locally based developers, innovators and entrepreneurs.
• The marriage of formal engineering and innovation training with community service and advocacy training, or collaborations between top universities with community-based organizations.

The full ComputerWorld article can be read here.

What do you think? Are the people developing new products and services meeting your needs?