Innovation does not have to be a zero-sum game. A high tide of new ideas and ingenuity raises all ships. For thousands of years, innovators from diverse communities have changed the world for the better—you will hear some of their stories here. Yet, traditionally, entrepreneurship and innovation spaces are dominated by majority groups. We can do much better. This is an opportunity for us all.
Race to Innovation weaves together stories of diverse innovators of the past, interviews with today’s innovation greats, and lived experiences in the innovation industry and personal entrepreneurship. Together, we prove that when we fully engage and empower more perspectives in the right way, we create opportunities that change our world for the better, not just socially, but also economically. Leveraging our differences can help us make a difference—not just in how we all live together, but in how we all thrive together.
We propose five principles that can help anyone seeking to leverage difference and thrive:
- Recognize Potential – entrepreneurship and innovation is premised on the discovery of under-appreciated, overlooked market opportunities. Marginalized entrepreneurs, communities and market needs represent potential with outsized return on investment opportunities. This is reflected in the hidden history and powerful present of Black entrepreneurship.
- Power of Enclaves – every entrepreneur’s journey is hard, but mainstream entrepreneurs benefit from social and psychological support, networks and connections, and an unwritten playbook for success that minority entrepreneurs do not have ready access to. Enclaves, including neighborhoods, friends and family, churches, colleges (especially HBCUs), networking groups, supportive investment funds, are more valuable than most realize and create preconditions for later success.
- Enable ownership – the premise of wealth generation is ownership. Well-paying corporate and professional positions may be less risky and more socially acceptable (especially for first-generation college graduates), and can lead to individual and family prosperity, but they will not likely produce game-changing wealth. Only ownership does that. As even Michael Jordan can attest.
- Unique Lens – Back to those overlooked, underserved market needs… diverse entrepreneurs and innovators have a unique lens on such opportunities. And often, they are scalable to larger markets.
- Accelerate Transformative Change – Every startup and innovation benefits from fuel applied to the fire at the right time. This can come from connections, pilots, investment, mentorship, a complementary team, partnership… as well as from boot camps, accelerators, and venture studios. The goal is to seize opportunities, grow, and build value at an accelerated pace. And that speeds up the impact on markets and communities, too.
JOHN PHILLIP BAMFORTH came of age in the 60s and 70s in the northwest of England. His hometown of Wigan could not have been more white and blue collar. Wigan is an old coal mining town, forged in the industrial revolution, founded on a hard-nosed, straightforward culture brought to life in George Orwell’s book “The Road to Wigan Pier” and best personified by its championship winning rugby team. Growing up, John had no idea how “white” his world was. Most of his encounters with people of color were infused by a level of casual, demeaning and dehumanizing racism across his community that still shocks him today.
His world opened up, as it does for many, when he went off to college at the University of Bath and later to graduate school at Aston University in Birmingham. He began to make friends with people from an array of backgrounds and developed a deep, life-long interest in other cultures and subcultures which has enriched his academic, professional and personal journey through life.
With a PhD in neuropharmacology, John joined Eli Lilly in 1989, and focused on building global brands and leading highly engaged and diverse teams. He emigrated to the U.S. in 2001. After retiring from Eli Lilly, he returned to academia to lead Eshelman Innovation at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. This institute is focused on translating the brightest and best ideas on campus into products and services that impact patients.
ROY STANFORD ZWAHLEN grew up an Army brat. At a time when many career military officers studied Russian, Roy’s father studied Arabic. As a result, Roy spent most of his formative years in the Middle East in Jordan, Turkey, Kuwait and Syria. In this great crossroads of history, civilization, commerce, religion, language and politics, he was exposed to a diversity of cultures that is hard to find in other corners of the world.
His educational experience was similarly diverse and unusual. Though taught in American schools abroad, his schools were filled with a mix of local students and the children of diplomats from around the world. His daily exposure to different cultures, languages, ideas and people shaped his experience of life. His periodic returns to the U.S. were both exciting and disorienting. Extracted from a mosaic of celebrated cultures, he encountered the challenging need to navigate subtle and not-so-subtle racial and ethnic barriers and divisions in schools. While the Middle East was no paradise, he found that his America had a ways to go to live up to the ideals taught to him by his veteran father and veteran grandfathers.
At Brigham Young University, he experienced another kind of disorientation when he became immersed for the first time in his own majority religious culture. While he shared a faith with this community, he did not find much commonality with his life experiences or his global view of culture and diversity. This was not unusual for Roy; just unexpected and he loved it. He was drawn to the opportunity of multicultural societies found in subjects like political science, economics, and international affairs studying the history of racism, finance of the Ottoman Empire, and the political history of South Asia. After earning his law degree at George Mason School of Law, he specialized in intellectual property, international trade, public health and economic development. He spent the first half of his career conducting think-tank activities representing the biotech industry advising state, national, and international bodies. After advising governments and industry on best-in-class technology innovation and entrepreneurism development economic models and policy for biotech, he decided to roll up his sleeves and build a model from the ground up.
As the Chief Strategy Officer for Eshelman Innovation, he’s responsible for building and managing strategy, governance, and operations.
