How do diversity and inclusion drive innovation in business?

3 episodes

1

Why some companies break through with radical innovation (and others don’t)
2

Mobile incubator: a social innovation making entrepreneurship accessible
3

Gender, disability, seniors: inclusive innovation finds its place in business

Épisode 1/3

Why some companies break through with radical innovation (and others don’t)

On November 12th, 2025

4 min reading time

Simcha Jong

Professor at University College London and Associate Researcher at IP Paris

Network theory establishes a relationship between an organization's production of ideas based on individual collaborations and their connections within an organization.
From these relationships, it has been observed that close-knit and interconnected teams excel at refining existing ideas and effectively implementing improvements.
However, over time and with the same social circle, the ways of thinking of members of a group develop similarities in their mental models, causing “cognitive lock-in.”
Beyond these dense groups, the most radical innovations emerge from unexpected places, particularly on the peripheries of these organizational networks.
Organizations need two simultaneously different approaches in order to overcome the conservatism of tightly knit networks: incremental innovation and radical innovation.

Épisode 2/3

On November 4th, 2025

4 min reading time

Julien Billion

Professor at ICN business school and associate researcher at Université de Lorraine

Some entrepreneurial projects emerge in circumstances of extreme hardship – in such case entrepreneurship becomes a path to self-empowerment.
Business incubators need to take into account the needs of people who start businesses despite the challenges they face.
Even though there are programmes to support entrepreneurship, the environments aren't fully inclusive, especially when it comes to digital technology.
The mobile incubator is an innovation that targets the needs of certain groups, like homeless young people and people with disabilities.
A mobile, flexible and adaptable system, it allows support services to be brought to the people themselves, by investing in their living environments and communities.

Épisode 3/3

On April 23rd, 2024

4 min reading time

Estelle Peyrard

Research Associate at Ecole Polytechnique (IP Paris)

Companies have a role to play in building a more inclusive society, both in their HR policies and in the products and services they design.
The group of people who are frequently discriminated against or excluded by companies is extremely large.
Paradoxically, inclusion policies for people with disabilities are often devised without the participation of the people most affected.
Organisations play a major role in providing a link between companies and the people affected, who are far from the workplace.
Good practices such as awareness-raising and employee involvement help to spread inclusive innovations.