Diversity invites inclusion, and inclusion invites a heightened state of productivity. Diversity and inclusion go hand in hand with product management, innovation, and evolution of any business. A set of diverse team members will bring more to the table and will be able to offer revolutionary innovation at your fingertips.
Hi, I’m Ninika Nanda. I am an innovative product professional with experience in digital transformation across e-commerce, payments, financial services, health, and retail. Over the course of my professional career for the last decade and a half, I have closely observed the true prowess of Diversity and Inclusion and the benefits it offers in terms of innovation and ingenuity.
Today, I am associated with number of business, and I do my best to promote diversity across all teams and to enhance the level of inclusion for different team. A fresh pair of eyes or a second opinion is always a refreshing touch to innovation, and diversity offers much more than that. Diversity doesn’t only mean hiring people from different ethnic backgrounds or regions. It runs deeper than that.
How Can Diversity Help Product And Innovation?
I have traveled to a lot of different continents and countries. From India to the USA, my professional journey has taken me on an exciting and insightful trip through the UK and several European countries, and I have accumulated a wealth of knowledge that boils down to one core fact: Diversity and Inclusion serve as the backbone of any organization.
Diversity doesn’t mean hiring people from different ethnicities and backgrounds. Diversity extends to technology, practices, office culture, and the environment, individual believe and many more. Rather than staying true to a singular set of practices and technology, organizations need to employ a wide spectrum of modern-era options to embrace diversity in its true form.
Instead of embracing a monotonous office culture, diversity and inclusion allow for a combination of several productive cultures merged into a harmonious workplace environment. Diversity fosters productivity and invites inclusion to the mix. Inclusion enables organizations to take advantage of the unique perspectives of different team members and allows them to embed innovation into their products.
I have worked with a wide variety of corporate, and the one thing that I always did was to promote a culture that invoked and sustained diversity. Why?
Like I have already stated, I have been to several different continents. I consider myself to be a keen observer of human nature (I must say I am passionate about this), and I have found people from different regions to have a unique set of perspectives. When you pool different worldviews into one product, you gain the opportunities to deliver an all-inclusive and turnkey product that can easily cater to a wider array of people.
Modern-era customers tend to refrain from traditional products and move towards multi-purpose and multi-faceted products that can offer the same set of pros to a wider community of different regions. Therefore, diversity is essential as it serves as the steppingstone to inclusion. Inclusion, as a result, embeds different worldviews into the offered products and allow you to deliver effective solutions.
Diversity And Inclusion Serve As The Backbone Of Any Organization.
Let’s Talk About The Benefits
Yes. In the past, organizations have reached great heights of success while simultaneously ignoring diversity. Well, the only reason this monotonous culture survived, and fetched profits was the lack of reaction from the customers. Is it sustainable?
However, nowadays, customers are aware of and seek diversity from manufacturers and organizations. Therefore, diversity is elemental for success in today’s market. Let’s take a look at the benefits of diversity and inclusion in product and innovation.
Enhanced Creativity
Do you want your products to feel redundant and objectively dull, or do you want to add a touch of flair and creativity? If you want the latter, diversity can do that in an instant. Contrary to the popular proverb, “too many cooks spoil the broth,” product management and innovation thrive with too many cooks in a controlled environment.
However, there is such a thing as too much. This is why you need to embrace diversity yet adhere to mediation when it comes to implementing all the creative responses from different team members. Ideal workplace diversity fosters a creative environment and encourages the team members to offer their valuable input for every project.
Well-Informed Decisions
Well-informed and heuristics-oriented decisions lead the company towards success. That is one of the best benefits of inclusion as you involve more than one worldview before making a decision. The wealth of information, experiences, regional expertise, and local interactions allow you to make well-informed decisions and take the company to the next level.
Multiple perspectives fuel creative debates and bring forth innovative results in terms of products. This is why you need to include diversity in teams and let them make profitable decisions that rise above a singular mindset.
Superior Quality Products And Services
Yes. Diversity and inclusion can help you deliver premium-quality products and services that will set you apart from the rest and make you stand taller than your competitors. The growing diversity in consumers demands diversity in manufacturers as well. In the last 15 years, I have worked with several teams, and I was always able to deliver a higher level of customer satisfaction and services with diverse teams.
Why? Well, the different perspectives from different team members fueled the design and distribution system of these products and services. Moreover, the diversity within the team allowed us to make diverse decisions to cater to different communities in a manner that was well-appreciated by the consumers.
What Is The Bottom Line Here?
Broadening your professional perspective will help you achieve more than before. My years of experience in the industry has taught me to embrace diversity with open arms and welcome the valuable input that comes from diversity-induced inclusion.
The team members feel valued in all-inclusive teams, and there are always some hidden gems to unravel that can further drive the success of the products. So, diversity and inclusion are the two keys to success in a modern-era climate, and you need to embed these into your workplace culture to achieve your goals.
What techniques & tools you are using with your team to embed ‘Diversity & inclusion’ and make each member valued & get best from each of them?
