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The Inclusive Innovation Playbook
The Inclusive Innovation Playbook
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Inspiration for Action

🎉 Congratulations on taking the first step towards inclusive innovation.
By picking up this playbook, you have shown a desire to create positive change by advocating for diversity, equity and inclusion in your organisation and the products and services you create.

hand-holding-heart
Welcome to our movement of change makers! The world needs more people like you in it.

Inclusivity is a journey, not a destination. We hope this playbook will serve as a useful guide to help you find your path forward. It will give you a deeper understanding of the challenges and opportunities associated with inclusive innovation. But ultimately we hope it will support you to take action, and to inspire more people to also become advocates for change.
If your organisation is ready to innovate inclusively, here are the strategies you’ll need to implement. We have provided a holistic view to enable you to take an organisation wide collective approach. This playbook is filled with strategies and guidance to help you. Depending on your role you can dip into the areas most relevant to you.

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Image of 15 hexagons with the 15 actions for inclusive innovation shown in the table below.
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Inclusion innovation actions
Search
Action
How?
Who?
1
Assess your maturity
Take the
Inclusive Innovation Self Assessment
⁠
to assess your organisation’s maturity and identify your priority areas for change. Diversily can assist with an independent assessment.
Senior Leaders
DEI Lead
Product
2
Agree on your principles
Define the
principles
⁠
, tailored for your organisation and tied to your values, vision and mission, that will guide people to innovate inclusively.
Senior Leaders
DEI Lead
Product
3
Create accountability
Review and change your organisational structures and responsibilities for inclusive innovation to ensure organisational and individual accountability.
Senior Leaders
DEI Lead
Team Leads
Product
4
Prioritise
Agree and define your high level objectives for
the change
⁠
you’d like to tackle first.
Senior Leaders
DEI Lead
Content & Marketing
Product
UX & Research
Design
5
Invest
Put together a
business case
⁠
to secure dedicated funding to support your inclusive innovation efforts.
Senior Leaders
DEI Lead
Product
6
Educate
All teams and leaders should have training and development opportunities to build the mindset, skillset and toolset for inclusive innovation. Start by reading and sharing this playbook! Define your training needs. Learn more about
Diversily Inclusive Innovation Workshops here
⁠
.
Senior Leaders
DEI Lead
Content & Marketing
Product
UX & Research
Design
Team Leads
7
Build inclusive teams
Review your
team’s experiences
⁠
and interactions, such as when in meetings, making decisions or generating ideas, to change behaviour to create psychological safety, foster inclusion and boost engagement.
Senior Leaders
DEI Lead
Content & Marketing
Product
UX & Research
Design
Team Leads
8
Enable diverse participation
Review and change how you
diversify participation
⁠
and amplify feedback from underserved groups throughout the lifecycle from research to user testing.
Product
UX & Research
Design
Content & Marketing
9
Adopt inclusive practices
Review and change your current
innovation practices
⁠
across the lifecycle and
Agile
⁠
ceremonies to embed inclusion and cater for diversity.
Senior Leaders
DEI Lead
Team Leads
Product
10
Counter bias
Conduct a
bias
⁠
review to see where bias may be showing up in your products and practices and identify the changes you could make to mitigate.
Senior Leaders
DEI Lead
Content & Marketing
Product
UX & Research
Design
Team Leads
11
Create inclusive user experiences
Review your user experience through the lens of different underserved groups (e.g.
disability
⁠
,
gender & sexuality
⁠
,
neurodiversity
⁠
and
culture & ethnicity
⁠
) to understand unique challenges and identify opportunities to empower more users, create equity and reduce potential harm. Use
The Viewpoints Canvas
⁠
and the
User Impact Canvas
⁠
.
Product
UX & Research
Design
12
Create inclusive content
Review your content to identify opportunities to use more
inclusive language
⁠
or
imagery
⁠
throughout the user lifecycle.
Content & Marketing
Product
UX & Research
Design
13
Adopt inclusive data collection practices
Review your
data collection practices
⁠
and technology choices to create safer, equitable and more empowering experiences for all.
Data & Technology
DEI Lead
Product
UX & Research
14
Consider impact
Consider the
sociotech
⁠
and
user impact
⁠
of your innovations. Implement
Impact Checkpoints
⁠
to build it into your process. Conduct a ‘
Future Scanning
⁠
’ exercise to explore the potential future social impact of your products or services and how you can play your part in creating a more equitable future.
Senior Leaders
DEI Lead
Product
UX & Research
Design
Content & Marketing
Team Leads
Data & Technology
15
Measure success
Review your current product or service
metrics
⁠
and see how you can expand these to glean insights and drive progress around diversity, equity and inclusion.
Senior Leaders
DEI Lead
Team Leads
Product
There are no rows in this table
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The Diversily Canvas Collection

Diversily is known for our visual frameworks. Our first ever canvas is called The Change Canvas, which has been used by thousands of people around the world to drive inclusive change. The Diversily Canvas Collection has grown to include a number of visual frameworks to help you drive inclusive action.
You can learn more and download all canvases in the
Diversily Visual Frameworks
⁠
section of this playbook.

Inclusive innovation is a marathon, not a sprint.

It takes time, effort, and commitment.
You can’t do everything at once. Start with small steps and build momentum over time. Small changes can have a dramatic impact. Celebrate your successes along the way and learn from your challenges.

Creating inclusive products is a mix of science and art.

Creating innovative solutions that meet the needs of diverse users, while still achieving your overall product goals isn’t easy. You’ll need:
A methodical, evidence based approach backed by data and research.
Imagination, intuition and compelling stories that win hearts and minds.
Strong relationships and influence, both internally and externally.
A balanced approach is needed. For example if you rely solely on data driven qualitative insights, you may never understand the true reality of your users from minority groups, whose voices may never be heard. Similarly if you focus too much on certain groups of users, you run the risk of excluding others.
The path for each organisation is different.

Inclusive innovation starts with you

Unlike other strategic product initiatives, inclusive innovation starts with self reflection. The products we build are a direct reflection of our society, our beliefs and our view of the world.
We see the world not how it is, but as we are. Our perception plays a big part in defining what is truth to us. As Inclusive innovators we have to be able to see the world from other people’s perspectives. This starts with:
Understanding your own privileges and biases.
Being humble enough to know that you don’t have all of the answers.
Being curious enough to learn about other peoples experiences.
Being brave enough to have some uncomfortable conversations.
The identities and experiences of everyone in your team will influence how you design products or services. Frank conversations are needed to explore who you are as a team and acknowledge your gaps. This will help you move away from only building for the dominant group, towards building with and for all.
By working together and staying committed to the journey, we can create a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive world for everyone.
So, take the first step today and keep moving forward!

We’re here to help


rocket
If you need help,
contact Diversily
⁠
, and we’ll see how we, or one of our partners can support you.
We offer Inclusive Leadership programmes, Inclusive Innovation Masterclasses, maturity assessments and inclusive culture building events as well as bespoke consultancy.

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Feedback please
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: We love hearing stories about how the playbook is being used, what is working well and suggestions for improvement.
Please share your feedback here
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.

We have made the Inclusive Innovation Playbook freely available to maximise its impact and reach.

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Please consider making a donation that reflects the value you gain from it, in order to show your appreciation for our contributing volunteers, and enable it’s continued evolution.

Your contribution will make a huge difference. Thank you!

Inclusion innovation actions
The Diversily Canvas Collection
Inclusive innovation is a marathon, not a sprint.
Creating inclusive products is a mix of science and art.
Inclusive innovation starts with you
We’re here to help
We have made the Inclusive Innovation Playbook freely available to maximise its impact and reach.
Your contribution will make a huge difference. Thank you!
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