“Innovation is what is at stake.”
There’s good reason businesses around the world are investing in diversity and inclusion initiatives. Representation, skills, creativity and innovation are just a few of the ways D&I are essential and have major impact on businesses today.
In the latest episodes of the WIN Conversation series, three high-ranking women executives from across Dassault Systèmes discuss the importance of diversity and inclusion for the business.
For Josephine Ong, AP South managing director in Singapore, nothing less than innovation – vital in the fast-paced world of technology – is stake.
“You can’t have innovation without others and, in innovation, there are bound to be people who disagree,” says Ong. “What is at stake is if you don’t bring people together, you tend to lose ideas. If you don’t bring people together, you can’t debate and challenge each other for something that’s much better than what you had initially thought of. So, innovation is what is at stake.”
For a global organization operating in a global economy across a dozen different industries, diversity is an essential element of the business. Representation matters to customer-centric businesses in a time of increasingly conscious consumers.
“It’s vital to have people from different points of life in your organization,” said Linda Hassan, VP and global head of diversity, equity and inclusion. “We’re a global economy. And so, to be effective in the marketplace, we need to have people who represent that marketplace in our organization.”
For GEOVIA CEO Michelle Ash, inclusion means getting everyone involved in a conversation. Diversity of perspectives helps tackle some of the greatest challenges, like decarbonization and creating a more sustainable planet.
“If you really want to build a diverse team, and you really want to be inclusive, you are going to have people on your team who by definition don’t agree with you, that don’t have the same way of operating as you, that don’t think like you,” Ash said. “And, you can either find those people really frustrating and tell them to be more like you, or you can manage that frustration and include what makes them great in the conversation and be part of the team.”
WIN Conversations invites talented women from 3DS to talk openly and informally about their beliefs, influences, career experiences and views on gender diversity. The series launched around International Women’s Day 2021. Watch the latest three episodes below.
Discover the full series:
