Technology & Innovation is proud to present Volume 22, Issue 3: Diversity, Invention, and Innovation. While women, people of color, and other historically underrepresented groups have been responsible for many important inventions, numerous barriers result in the lack of diversity in innovation and invention. This issue features a special editorial from Invent Together’s Holly Fechner and Morgan Schreurs and 11 articles that explore how the diversity gaps in invention and innovation are stunting our nation’s innovation capacity and present frameworks and recommendations to confront this challenge.
See the full issue here.
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Engaging More Women in Academic Innovation: Findings and Recommendations
Jane Muir, Megan Aanstoos, Tamsen Barrett, Almesha Campbell, Forough Ghahramani, Jennifer Gottwald, Kirsten Leute, Nichole Mercier, and Jennifer Shockro offer a set of recommendations on how best to engage women and other under-represented groups in academic innovation.
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Increasing Inventor Diversity: U.S. Public Policy Recommendations
Holly Fechner, Morgan Schreurs, and Eric Chung from Invent Together present public policy recommendations to increase equity, inclusion, and diversity in inventing and patenting. Their recommendations for the U.S. government include improving data collection and research to measure and advance equity in patenting; supporting historically underrepresented inventors by providing education, legal, and technical assistance and promoting workplace equity; and spotlighting historically underrepresented inventors and promoting diversity
among patent counsel and patent examiners.
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Applying a 'Mentor-Protege' Approach to Broadening Participation of HBCUs in the National Innovation Network
Thaddeus McEwen, Jessica Fields, Caesar R. Jackson, Jill Keith, Cira Cardaci, Nhi Tran, and John A. Blaho discuss the methodology and outcomes of using a ‘mentor-protege’ model in delivering the I-Corps curriculum in order to diversify participation in I-Corps and expand the innovation capacities of HBCUs.
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Engaging Latina Students in the Invention Ecosystem
Cristina Saenz and Audra Skukauskaitė explore ways to include Latinas (and other diverse students) in inventing, including valuing their unique perspectives and funds of knowledge and embedding Invention Education within the school day.
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Gendered Perception of Online University Learning of STEM Entrepreneurship During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Dustin Britton, Sara Thermer, James A. Perez, and Jin Kim Montclare examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Pre-Capstone Innovation Experience course at New York University. Specifically, they found a gendered impact on the learning of undergraduate students due to the pandemic and the move to online learning.
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Inclusive Pathways to Invention: Racial and Ethnic Diversity Among Collegiate Student Inventors in a National Prize Competition
Using evidence gathered from over 2,000 student inventors who applied to a national prize competition, April Burrage, Janell Ciemiecki, Stephanie Couch, and Ina Ganguli offer intriguing new perspectives on the engagement of under-represented minority groups in invention and suggest future directions for further research.
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Building Innovation Capacity and Acumen: Rethinking How to Converge Engineering and Clinical Medicine
Christine Nunziata, Mahya Beheshti, Ryan Branski, Steven Kuyan, Kurt Becker, and John-Ross Rizzo argue that institutions should create a collaborative culture to foster innovation. To that end, they discuss current programs, identify critical gaps, and offer potential solutions to promote a key area for transdisciplinary collaboration: engineering immersion for clinicians.
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Inventors with Disabilities – an Opportunity for Innovation, Inclusion, and Economic Development
Jonathan Duvall, Sivashankar Sivakanthan, Brandon Daveler, S. Andrea Sundaram, and Rory A. Cooper note that people with disabilities (PwD) represent a significant percentage of the population but continue to be under-represented in STEM. This study aims to identify PwD with patented technologies, assess the impact of these inventors, and suggest directions for future research.
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Whitey on the Moon: Racism's Maintenance of Inequity in Invention & Innovation
James Holly Jr. and Yolanda L. Comedy point out that the invention and innovation community both desires to improve the racial inequities that currently limit the potential and opportunities for Black inventors and often replicates the very behaviors and structures that cause these disparities to exist. They offer three concrete ways that we can begin to address these challenges in the invention community.
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Comparative Economic Outcomes from SBIR Funding: “Underserved” versus Higher-award States
Michael P. Wallner, Jeff Peterson, Will Swearingen, Michelle Zook, Cara Jorgensen, and Robin Gaster analyze the comparative economic outcomes of the U.S. Department of Defense SBIR/STTR awards and find that underserved states had superior outcomes as compared to those in high-award states, suggesting that SBIR program efforts to assist firms in low-award states are a sound investment.
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USPTO – WE Intro Remarks
In the USPTO feature, we hear directly from Kathi Vidal as she shares her thoughts from the launch of the USPTO’s new Women’s Entrepreneurship (WE) initiative. WE is aimed at increasing the number of women entrepreneurs and empowering them to achieve greater success by teaching them about IP, connecting them with funding, and growing their networks.
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