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Bringing Everyone In: Evaluating Inclusive Innovation by Jacki Purtell and Samantha Langan

Hello! We’re Jacki Purtell and Samantha Langan, Senior Data Intelligence Analysts with VentureWell’s Data Intelligence team. VentureWell is a national nonprofit headquartered in Hadley, Massachusetts, that specializes in funding, training, and cultivating a pipeline of science and technology inventors, innovators, and entrepreneurs. Together with our partners, we are driven to solve the world’s biggest challenges and create positive social and environmental impact.     

In the US, STEM innovators are more likely to be male, white, and from the top 1% of income earners. Advancing equity so that people from diverse, varied backgrounds are included in STEM innovation is central to VentureWell’s mission. As evaluators, inclusivity in practice and methodology is paramount to our work and program development. To practice inclusive evaluation and adapt effectively to our context and audiences, we ask the following three questions:

  1. Who are our collaborators in designing and evaluating effective, inclusive innovation-focused programs? 

We begin by identifying innovation ecosystem members who are impacted by our programs’ innovations and interested in their outcomes, including university-based STEM innovators (teaching faculty, students, researchers, etc.), funders, industry leaders, and community representatives. This partnership network helps focus a program’s vision, values, participants, and provides information about needs in a local context.

  1. How do we define inclusive innovation for this effort? 

After gaining insights about contextual factors, we clarify what inclusive innovation means to our collaborators. Changes to the Census race and ethnicity categories demonstrate that conceptions of inclusivity are continually evolving. The National Science Foundation offers a definition: innovation participation (leadership, R&D, translation, education, etc.) should reflect diversity across a community – race, ethnicity, gender, disability status, population size, education level, and more. 

Additionally, program settings influence how inclusive innovation is defined, for example, urban settings compared to rural settings, or minority-serving institutions compared to industry-driven ecosystems. Benchmarking existing work – especially by identifying traditional innovators and spaces and nontraditional innovators and spaces helps us pinpoint opportunities for change. 

In defining inclusive innovation with collaborators, we assess who is well-served in the current system and who is challenged by systemic barriers. We ask guiding questions including:

  • How is innovation defined and valued by this community?
  • What role does innovation play in this context? What challenges is it solving?
  • Who are the innovators and who is missing? How do innovators enter the ecosystem, and what barriers prevent entry?
  1. What evaluation practices promote inclusivity? 

We leverage evaluation methods that centralize equity (developmental, principles-focused, and/or culturally-responsive and ethical evaluation). Because we work collaboratively, we begin with co-creation and discussions about what is valued. Co-creating evaluation plans, instruments, and methods elicits multiple perspectives to determine goals, approaches, questions, and outcomes. 

Co-creation includes co-analysis. Bringing collaborators into data analysis and interpretation strengthens our ability to tell a story that accurately reflects shared experiences. We center utilization in reporting so that collaborators identify actionable insights and see themselves creating change. Our experience shows us that this improves the likelihood more inclusivity develops.

Catalyzing change drives our goals with inclusive innovation and inclusive evaluation – to be storytellers for robust and inventive work that takes on pressing challenges.

Lessons Learned

  • Inclusive evaluation and innovation are strengthened by a broad collaborator network that can help identify the values, strengths, needs, and local contexts.
  • Evaluating inclusivity is not a one-size fits all approach; we adapt our work based on what inclusive innovation means to our collaborators.
  • Practicing inclusivity in evaluation includes being co-creators and co-analysts with collaborators, focusing on utilization to advance change. 

Check out tomorrow’s final post on the future of our work.

Thanks to our colleague, Polly Todd, for her help finalizing this post.


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