Equitable Innovation: What It Is and What It Takes to Achieve It
At Tidal Equality, innovation isn’t just about creating something new—it’s about making meaningful changes to existing work, processes, and decision-making to ensure they are fairer, more inclusive, and equitable. This broader view of innovation prioritizes reducing bias, barriers, and inequalities to promote fairness and equal opportunity for all. But while the concept of equitable innovation is gaining attention, few organizations have a scalable method for achieving it. That's where the Equity Sequence® comes in—a practical framework designed to guide individuals and organizations in turning equitable ideas into actionable, lasting change.
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Overcoming DEI Backlash in Higher Education: How equitable innovation promises you continued impact
Colleges and universities across the U.S. are facing new challenges with the rise of anti-DEI legislation. Entire DEI offices are shutting down, and staff are being let go. But there’s hope. 🌟
At Tidal Equality, we champion ‘equitable innovation’—a strategy to ensure fairness and inclusion despite these setbacks. Equitable innovation involves making decisions that address unmet needs, reduce bias, and break down barriers.
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Alzheimer’s Society Case Study: Making Equitable Process Innovations, Inside and Out
Alzheimer’s Society, a UK charity, underwent transformative changes to enhance racial and ethnic inclusion. Fueled by Equity Sequence® training and prompted by global events like the George Floyd protests, the organization adapted its outreach processes and internal hiring strategies. Recognizing disparities in dementia-related services, they embraced innovative approaches, seeking feedback, and fostering inclusivity. This case study showcases their commitment to dismantling barriers, internally and externally, ultimately working towards a more equitable and accessible future for individuals affected by dementia.
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Advancing Equity and Inclusion for Students
Read about the impactful journey of the Mohawk Students’ Association (MSA) as they champion equity and inclusion within Mohawk College and nationwide. From their roots in unifying student activities, MSA has become a leader, fostering a sense of belonging for students. Guided by their core values, MSA embraced Equity Sequence®, driving initiatives like establishing a living wage and creating inclusive spaces. The MSA's story resonates as a testament to the transformative potential of equity and inclusion.
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Amplifying Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the Los Angeles Zoo
Jess’s case study shows how Equity Sequence®, has the potential to take examples of this kind; of concrete change-making—and multiply them to an exponential degree, toward L.A. City’s goal of “bringing people together—across neighborhoods, ethnicities, generations and ages—to be part of the solution” to the City’s challenges, big and small.
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Beyond Rhetoric: Civil Servants Pilot Equitable Innovation at the City of L.A.
For Tanya, Equity Sequence® is unlocking a puzzle she's sometimes faced in her equity work:
How do you equip people with tool(s) to advance equity, while letting them lead as experts in their field? How do you truly empower others? How do you let them design their own equity interventions, without somehow taking over the reins?
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Understanding and Addressing AI Bias
Even in what may seem like “lower-stakes” uses of AI, it’s those most often subjected to unjust treatment by inequitable systems who will suffer most and be most harmed.
If you’re a person of Middle Eastern descent misidentified as a terrorist, it’s not low stakes.
If a machine downgrades your ability to get a kidney transplant because you’re Black, it’s not low stakes.
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Building Equitable Thinking and EQUITABLE INNOVATION into Project Management
Marnie is overseeing a BIG initiative at Busch® Systems. She’s helping create a Project Management Office (PMO). This PMO will serve as a central hub for the company. It will establish guidelines and set ground rules for any future project, large or small.
Yet what struck me was how much of what she described could apply to ANY project, ANYWHERE.
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Why Ensuring Inclusive Healthcare Matters and How Equity Sequence® Can Help
Inclusive healthcare starts with an awareness that you can’t unsee inequities tied to healthcare once you know about them.
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“Too Late” to Vaccinate 70% of the World: What If an Equity Sequence® Mindset Had Prevailed?
“…it’s precisely this concentration of power that an Equity Sequence® mindset challenges you to call into question—whether that concentrated power is brought about by economic policies that increase wealth inequality; by racial or cultural dynamics that breed paternalistic attitudes; by status-worship social habits that foster deference to celebrity gurus as sources of authority; or by elite-educated, tech-bro networks that lead to insular thinking.”
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Post-Mortem: Imagine If COP26 Had Been Guided by the Equity Sequence®
What if, I couldn’t help but imagine—because I’ve been steeped in thinking about the Equity Sequence™ and its relevance to the most pressing forms of inequality weighing on the world today—what if those with decision-making power had truly applied Equity Sequence™ thinking and Equity Sequence™ questioning in drafting the Glasgow Climate Pact?
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Creating a Domino Effect of Impact and Influence Through Tough Conversations
Beyond the practical application of integrating the Sequence™ into their work, I also talked to David about the importance of making conversations about inequality—and especially racial injustice—easier to have, at least as a starting point. Because the truth is, we all talk about needing to have uncomfortable conversations. But getting from the needing to the having…well, there’s the rub.
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From Bedtime Chats to Business Strategy: How One Leader Is Fuelling Equitable Change
“Of all the things I’ve seen,” Jeff said, “Equity Sequence™ is the most effective way of asking a group of leaders who aren’t truly representative or reflective of the customer base to try and make decisions that are.”
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Jeff Dodds, Chief Operating Officer at Virgin Media is making it his mission to accelerate equitable change with a seismic push.
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Top Down and Bottom Up: Can There Be Real Progress Without Both?
“I’m not trying to change the hearts and minds of all my colleagues,” she said, “Would I like to? Sure. But my vision is that those already inclined to agree will be on board first. And slowly it will trickle down.”
“As a social studies teacher,” she pointed out, “I know that’s the evolution of our country.”
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Reflecting, rethinking, redressing: making medical care more inclusive
Having completed the training (along with his staff), Ian has adopted a take-it-and-run-with-it energy, applying the Equity Sequence™ toward as many aspects of the program’s processes as he can. Toward recruitment. Toward admissions. And toward the curriculum.
Is a traditional science degree truly a necessity toward becoming an effective clinician? If a Black or Indigenous candidate were to come to an interview with a panel of all-White physicians, would their level of ease be the same as a White candidate’s? Does the four-year GPA average disadvantage students who might get off to a slow start but end up academically strong? All this questioning has led their task force to make tangible, measurable, concrete changes to the program.
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When failing to think inclusively costs lives
As extremes of economic inequality, exacerbated by the pandemic, make it impossible to imagine simply going back to business as usual, the viral spread of far-right extremism and escalating nativist rhetoric make it hard to shake off a sense of foreboding.
We need to address head-on, rather than dance around, the parallels between White nationalist groups on the one hand, intent on maintaining the current power structure or even returning it to an outdated past, and the kind of uneasiness and resistance you still find in the professional world; the academic; the world of arts and entertainment; and countless others, toward the idea of expanding equity and disrupting or challenging an existing power dynamic in the process.
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The Problem With Unconscious Bias Training
Trying to quash biased decision-making with unconscious bias training is like sending someone into a mole-infested football field, blindfolded, with a mallet, to play whac-a-mole.
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Your frenemy, the job interview
Job interviews are like first dates: good impressions count, awkwardness can occur, and outcomes are unpredictable.
But job interviews shouldn’t be like first dates. If your organization is looking to hire right the first time, consider evolving (and debiasing) your hiring practices.
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3 Ways COVID-19 is sabbotaging your decision-making & 3 ways to fight back
Many decision-makers are particularly susceptible in crisis situations to making mistakes and bad decisions due to overconfidence, excessive risk taking, and conscious and unconscious biases of all kinds.
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Is your digital space invisible or impossible? How lack of accessibility undermines impact
Our online spaces are designed in ways that prevent so many people - too many people - from connecting, buying and selling, entertaining, informing, innovating. Their accessibility, or lack thereof, determines whether people have an equal opportunity to access all that the digital world has to offer.
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