What is Inclusive Innovation?

Inclusive Innovation addresses a broader range of social goals for innovation and asks about both who participates in – or is excluded from innovation activities and who benefits (or experiences loss from) innovation (Dutz 2007).

Innovation is not neutral: it has both a rate and, crucially, a direction. The style of innovation frequently touted as the answer – the ‘move fast and break things’ Silicon Valley version) is often not inclusive at all – it can increase existing  social and economic inequality and have unintended environmental consequences.

 Strategies for Supporting Inclusive Innovation,

United Nations Development Program

For a better understanding of the global scope of Inclusive Innovation in this 3-minute video on YouTube (from King’s College in London, U.K.)

There are multiple dimensions in which this broader range can be addressed. For instance, in a 2017 briefing on inclusive innovation policy for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (Planes-Satorra & Paunov 2017), the following dimensions of inclusion are highlighted:

1. 1. In Demographic terms, inclusion addresses the need to reduce the underrepresentation or exclusion of individuals according to characteristics such as gender, race, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, and perceived disability status;
   2. Inclusion is also conceived in Geographic terms, with efforts made to increase the innovation participation and benefit for regions. Often, it is rural areas and socio-economically disadvantaged places that are targeted by such approaches;
   3. Industrial and Sectoral dimensions are also considered with the aim of including innovation participants and beneficiaries in more traditional sectors (i.e., outside of sectors such as digital technologies which many current innovation policies privilege).

Some of these broader aspects of Inclusive Innovation are discussed in a blog post from the Workplace Innovation Network for Canada, looking at initiatives to foster Inclusive Innovation at the global, national, regional and city levels. In the sections that follow here, you will focus on the reframing of employee-led innovation as Inclusive Workplace at the Workplace Level and on the links between this work and other Canadian research initiatives on Inclusive Innovation.

Inclusive Innovation at the Workplace Level

Recap:  Workplace Innovation is the employee-led social process of mobilizing new ideas to create better work The twin goals of employee Workplace Innovation are to improve both the quality of work life for employees and organizational performance for employers

The label “Inclusive Workplace Innovation” is beginning to be used in Canada to highlight how our adaptation of the European concept of workplace innovation links to the larger body of research and practice on Inclusive Innovation – and to suggest additional ways for Employee-led Workplace Innovation to promote more inclusive workplaces.

The conception of Employee-led Workplace Innovation has implicitly inclusive elements, with its focus on win-win goals for both the organization and the workforce and on the broader inclusion of employees as both participants and beneficiaries.

Viewed in the context of the OECD report referenced above, this suggests another aspect of inclusion that should be added to the previous three:

4. In Job Role terms, Inclusive Innovation moves from a perception that innovation is a specialized role (restricted to certain job positions) toward an understanding that all employees can be empowered as contributors to innovation in their workplace.

It should also be noted that past European research on employee-led workplace innovation has also explored some of the broader aspects of inclusion described above.  For example, promoting employee-led innovationwithin workplaces has been combined with advancing innovation activities outside major urban centres for Geographic inclusion (Totterdill 2017; Habibipour et al  2021) and with addressing other potential participants and beneficiaries of innovation activities beyond the workplace (such as “community development and environmental responsibility” (Mattieu et al 2021) and “sustained impacts at individual enterprise level and across the economy as a whole” (Pot et al 2023).

Some innovations to promote more inclusive workplace participation for Demographic inclusion have been employee-led initiatives. Some of these initiatives will be highlighted in later lessons such as:

• • Lesson 3.1: Participation of neuro-diverse workers in collaborative innovation methods such as Design Thinking
  • Lesson 3.2: Participation in workplace innovation projects by older workers (who are often excluded from innovation projects

Inclusive Workplace Innovation in Canada

Canada already has strong research centres studying Inclusive Innovation, with strong links to the international research on Inclusive Innovation at the national, regional and city levels. These centres include the Innovation Policy Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy (Zehavi & Breznitz 2017), the Institute for Science, Society and Policy at the University of Ottawa (Schillo & Robinson 2017) and the Brookfield Institute for Innovation (Munro & Zachariah 2021) within The Dias at Toronto Metropolitan University.

The concept has also transitioned into practice as a tool in policy formation. For example, a recent report for Employment and Social Development Canada on fostering innovation to achieve social goals called on the Government of Canada to embrace a more inclusive view of innovation and to value innovation for social and environmental good at the same level of ambition that it does commercial and technological innovation (ESDC 2018).

At the workplace level, the Inclusive Workplace Innovation theme has appeared in calls to foster more inclusive innovation in Canada by “Recognizing that any worker can be an engine of innovation”. This is Principle 5 in Pathways to Inclusive Innovation: Insights for Ontario and Beyond (Rivera et al 2018), which includes the following expanded commentary:

Workers from different educational and skills backgrounds can contribute to an innovation economy. Workforce training programs that provide foundational and transferable knowledge can prepare participants to adapt more easily to technological change and to directly contribute to process innovation and technology development. In turn, enabling workers to upskill for roles in innovative, technology-intensive firms benefits these firms by increasing their efficiency, competitiveness, and profitability, and allowing them to remain viable in quickly evolving sectors.

There has also been recognition of the need – and opportunity – for Canadian employers to engage their workforces in workplace innovation to advance organizational performance, quality of work life and regional economic development though innovation outside major urban centres (with a special focus on employers in Atlantic Canada (Pascoe-Deslauriers 2020). And a recent study in Ontario analyzed gaps in Ontario initiatives to promote local Makerspaces as a means to advance inclusive innovation (Vinodrai et al, 2021).

Case Study

It should be noted that these goals for Inclusive Innovation as part of employee-led innovationactivities are not always present in other conceptions of Workplace Innovation. The case study below illustrates this, via the observations of a group of European experts looking at workplace innovation through the lens of geographic and cultural contexts on a different continent. This also emphases the need for alignment: from high-level issues of culture and tradition through to the workplace level of job design and employee engagement.

Our company hosts took us to a newly built ‘smart factory’ producing a variety of types of refrigerators. Some 250 to 260 refrigerators are assembled per hour, with robots undertaking the major and heaviest tasks. The company has done an impressive job in applying digitization, automation and reducing the ergonomic risks for employees. In terms of productivity, cost-saving, energy reduction and better services to customers the case is highly successful. And the company has succeeded in reducing the musculoskeletal risks for workers.

However, we observed that little thought has been given to the quality of work from the perspective of ‘active / complete jobs’ – jobs that offer learning possibilities and which enhance the employability and sustainable skilling of workers. ‘Full workplace innovation’ requires taking an integral, systemic look at the full picture of what happens on the shopfloor.

At a second company, our hosts showed us an assembly line for washing machines parts…We viewed a very efficient and digitalized assembly line, but the remaining human work, done mostly by a flexible layer of migrant labourers under contract to an external subcontractor, comprised low skill, repetitive tasks.

Whilst the hosts were convinced that they were showing us a work environment which embodied the ‘utmost respect for humans’, we need to convey a still stronger message by demonstrating what we really mean by ‘fully inclusive workplace innovation’.

Adapted from (Totterdill & Oeij 2023)

Key Takeaways

In this Lesson you have explored a broader view of Inclusive Innovation and reframed Employee-Led Workplace Innovation as a fundamental building block.

The Case Story in Lesson 1.3 illustrates some of the factors that need to be considered in achieving Inclusive Workplace Innovation in particular workplace contexts – you will learn more about this Case Story in future Lessons.

(The Case Story in Lesson 1.4 illustrates the creative activities that await you in supporting and enabling other employees engaging in Inclusive Workplace Innovation.)

Further Learning

If you would like to learn more about the factors involved in Inclusive Innovation on a larger scale than individual organizations, you can find some applicable resources in the following blog posts from the Workplace Innovation Network for Canada:

• Highlights of Inclusive Innovation initiatives at national, regional and city levels (which includes quotes from the people who created the video cited earlier in this Lesson)
• National and regional policy initiatives in Europe for Inclusive Workplace Innovation

References for Lesson 1.2 – Enabling Inclusive Innovation in Canadian Workplaces

Dutz, Mark A.. 2007. Unleashing India’s Innovation: Toward Sustainable and Inclusive Growth. © Washington, DC: World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/6856

Employment and Social Development Canada (2018). Inclusive innovation – New ideas and new partnerships for stronger communities. Recommendations of the Social Innovation and Social Finance Strategy Co-Creation Steering Group.

Habibipour, A., Lindberg, J., Runardotter, M., Elmistikawy, Y., Ståhlbröst, A., & Chronéer, D. (2021). Rural living labs: inclusive digital transformation in the countryside. Technology Innovation Management Review, 11(9/10), 59-72.

Mathieu, C., Albin, M., Abrahamsson, K., and Lagerlöf, E. (2021). European approaches to sustainable work: Editors’ introductory remarks. European Journal of Workplace Innovation, Special Issue on Sustainable Work 6(1-2), 3-7. See also Pot, F., Abrahamsson, K. & Ennals, R. (Eds.), 2022. Sustainable work in Europe. Concepts, conditions, challenges. Peter Lang Publishing.

Munro, D. and Zachariah, J. (2021). Inclusive Innovation Monitor: Tracking growth, inclusion, and distribution for a more prosperous and just society. Brookfield Institute for Innovation, Feb. 2021. https://brookfieldinstitute.ca/wp-content/uploads/Inclusive_Innovation_Monitor-Report.pdf

Planes-Satorra, S. and Paunov, C. (2017). Inclusive innovation policies: Lessons from international case studies.  OECD Science, Technology and Industry Working Papers, No. 2017/02, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/a09a3a5d-en.

Pot, F. D., Alasoini, T., Totterdill, P., & Zettel, C. (2023). Towards research-based policy and practice of workplace innovation in Europe. In Oeij, P. R., Dhondt, S., & McMurray, A. J. (Eds.). A Research Agenda for Workplace Innovation: The Challenge of Disruptive Transitions, 253-271.

Rivera, D., Villeneune, S., Breznitz, D. and Zehavi, A. (2018). Pathways to Inclusive Innovation: Insights for Ontario and Beyond. Brookfield Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

Schillo, R. S., & Robinson, R. M. (2017). Inclusive innovation in developed countries: The who, what, why, and how. Technology Innovation Management Review, 7(7).

Totterdill, P. (2017). Workplace Innovation as Regional Economic Development: Towards a Movement? IJAR–International Journal of Action Research, 13(2), 9-10.

Vinodrai, T., Nader, B., & Zavarella, C. (2021). Manufacturing space for inclusive innovation? A study of makerspaces in southern Ontario. Local Economy, 36(3), 205-223.

Zehavi, A. & Breznitz, D. (2017). Distribution sensitive innovation policies: conceptualization and empirical examples. Research Policy 46, no. 1 (2017): 327– 336.