Dimensions & Insights: Your growth story includes DEI
Today’s competitive and disruptive environment requires diverse thinking and problem solving. Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices create a platform for differentiation, competitive advantages for firm performance and resiliency, and add to an asset manager’s bottom line and growth.
Preview
When Marion Donovan invented the first disposable diaper and pitched it to venture capitalists, they all laughed. Determined, she hired a lingerie manufacturer to help launch at Saks Fifth Ave,1 and made billions of parents’ diaper dreams come true. Lack of access for people with great ideas is one of the oldest stories in the world that still repeats today. However, today’s extremely competitive environment, ongoing disruptions, and innovations require diverse thinking and problem solving to find great opportunities.
Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices are essential2 to navigating our investment industry’s dynamic landscape:
- Thinking more holistically leads to more than company growth. Creating diverse and inclusive workforces produces the best outcomes for people, businesses, industries, societies, and investors.
- DEI practices and policies create company platforms for differentiation and competitive advantages for firm performance, innovation, and resiliency.
- Diverse practices, processes, and teams expand business strengths and possibilities for solutions.
- Companies and investors will miss investment opportunities unless they talk with people who can relate to their unique business problems and resonate with them.
- Younger generations seek to align with companies with similar values and will stand up for those shared values and beliefs.
- By acknowledging that all humans have natural biases, companies and leaders can find more ways to bring in more diverse talent and expand recruitment as much as possible to build their best teams.
As our global population changes, DEI practices will continue to contribute to growth across business lines and industries. Investors, companies, and leaders must embed DEI practices in their processes and leadership, or they risk missing the next US $50+ billion baby-diaper-market opportunity.
For more, please see my DEI discussion with CEO Jenny Johnson, “Dimensions & Insights: Your Growth Story Includes DEI” and its transcript in the complete PDF below.
Watch the video here!
Endnotes
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Source: “Marion Donovan: Disposable diaper,” Lemelson-MIT (Massachusetts of Technology).
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Source: PwC, Time to get serious: If diversity is a business imperative, treat it like one, September 2019.
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