Greetings from the bi-annual meeting of the National Center for Women in IT - one of the main partners of the Anita Borg Institute - ABI is part of the hub structure of NCWIT as the Industry Hub where we take a lead role in informing workforce issues in terms of the recruitment, retention, and advancement of technical women in the workforce.
This afternoon, I will be presenting on some emerging findings from our study with the Clayman Institute at Stanford on technical men and women in industry, Climbing the Technical Ladder.
The meetings are being held this year at Microsoft and the University of Washington. The conference was kicked off this morning by Ray Ozzie, Microsoft Chief Software Architect. In his talk, Ozzie reflected on the importance on diversity for technology innovation. As 80% of adults in the US use the web on a regular basis, the worst case scenario for a technology company are homogeneous product development teams that do not reflect the diverse needs of the consumer and are therefore limited in their ability to innovate for new users. In Ozzie’s words, “it takes different people and different perspectives to shape the products that we do.”
In ABI’s research review of the barriers to the advancement of technical women, I review the social science on group diversity and innovation outomes - highlighting the mechanisms through which gender diversity benefits product innovation.
More from the NCWIT meetings soon!