July 30, 2020, by aczjb1

Supporting Diversity and Inclusion in Innovation – Dr Tom Coogan

HGI’s Dr Tom Coogan has co-authored a new report on Supporting Diversity and Inclusion in Innovation, published last week by Innovate UK and sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council.

The study outlines barriers, challenges, opportunities and support needs for minority ethnic groups and disabled people to participate in business innovation, and the UKRI have already committed to implementing a number of recommendations from it.

The report taps into the Haydn Green Institute’s core research themes of disabled and ethnic minority entrepreneurship, and underlines its commitment to diversity and inclusion.

Key findings from the report included:

• Participation in business innovation is influenced not only by minority status, but by intersections with other social categories, such as gender, age and class/socioeconomic status.
• There are many commonalities between different minority and under-represented groups, but some significant differences were apparent in terms of perceptions, attitudes, motivations, barriers and support needs
• More policy initiatives are required to transform the system, tackling structural discrimination and the root causes of inequality and exclusion.

“I’m delighted that Innovate UK is directing attention and support to innovators from minority backgrounds”, Dr Coogan said. “One of the key reasons that I wanted to work at HGI was the strong links here to practitioner and community engagement, and this is a great example of that. I hope that we can be involved in further projects of this kind.”

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