Women's Impact on Innovation

Rocío Lorenzo, a diversity researcher and a management consultant, delivered a talk on female leadership for TED.

Lorenzo begins by telling her audience that diversity wasn't something she really thought about when she was growing up, as she had always assumed it was more of a concern for older generations of women. When she entered the workforce herself, she started to realize how few women she worked with, and especially how few claimed leadership roles. When she questioned this, she was told that diversity was something that her company aimed to comply with for the sake of political correctness, however not something that was deemed capable of improving it in more ways.

This prompted Lorenzo to begin researching the impact that female leadership has on a company. More specifically, she looked to see how it impacted its innovation revenue, which in large part is a measurement of how comfortable people are in bringing their ideas forward, as well as the diversity in thought that these employees offer.

By considering the results she found during her research, Lorenzo shows the importance of female leadership in companies that are trying to stay on top of their competitors, and pushes her audience to increase the level of gender diversity within their workplaces in order to progress both socially and financially.