Project

Measuring Inclusive Innovation

2023-2024

Innovation offers huge potential. It has the power to improve health, better connect people, and to make our societies more productive and sustainable. At the same time, it can also fuel inequalities, destroy livelihoods, and greatly damage the environment. There is an urgent need to develop models of innovation that increase its benefits and reduce its harms for people and the planet. We must also ensure that individuals and groups from all backgrounds are able to include themselves in the processes and practices of innovation.

Evidence of what works in building more inclusive innovation systems is limited, but there is a growing desire to bring focus and rigour to this area. This is a priority for IGL, where we are developing programmes that seek to address the underrepresentation of marginalised communities in innovation and entrepreneurship.

In partnership Catalyst, an independent, non-profit science and technology hub focused on fostering innovation and entrepreneurship in Northern Ireland, we are developing an approach to measuring and assessing the wider impacts (beyond purely economic indicators) of programmes designed to promote inclusion in innovation and capture the ‘lost innovative potential’ of marginalised groups. Through development of a bespoke framework for Catalyst to understand the different ways in which this programme could have impact (drawing on insights from international good practice), we hope to create a set of indicators and an approach to measuring inclusion in innovation that can be adopted and adapted by others. This project is being conducted in collaboration with Dr Robyn Klingler-Vidra (Reader in Entrepreneurship & Sustainability at King’s College London).