Sprint Showcase v1
News from the Funding Innovation Studio: October 31, 2024, Edition 19
Yesterday, we hosted our first ever Sprint Showcase, hosting about 50 people at LabCentral for the afternoon. I’m so thankful to everyone who joined us - such a vibrant and thoughtful group, spanning investors, founders, pharma partners, and entrepreneurial support organizations.
The Funding Innovation Studio is a community first, and my head is still buzzing from all of the generative, creative conversations that formed amongst our community during this event.
Yesterday, we also shared out the results from our first two experiments. One of those experiments focused on how we can create a greater sense of belonging at networking events for people who feel like outsiders when they arrive. The second experiment focused on applying research from Harvard Kennedy School around better designs for pitch events. I’m excited to share that six organizations have already volunteered to activate the recommendations we shared out from our results!
Anyone who has created anything from idea to launch knows the amount of energy it takes to go from zero to one, to literally bring a concept into existence. I’ll be taking a short break next week (no newsletter) and will be back the following week to share the full details of these experiments here, including our experiment design (assumptions, hypotheses, action plan) and our results.
And this work couldn’t have been completed without the incredible support of so many people on our LabCentral team, who helped with facilitation of the experiments, marketing, event management, and helping me brainstorm and design some of the big strategic elements of this program. I feel incredibly thankful to work with all of them and to be building this community with you. Thank you for being a part of the Funding Innovation Studio - we’re just getting started!
As I mentioned, I will be publishing out the results of this year’s experiments over the next few weeks, so you can engage with the learnings whenever you like.
If you were not able to join us in person and would like to dig into our process and the experiments we ran in more depth, I will also be hosting a mini Virtual Showcase event on November 21st on Zoom.
Research Spotlight
I’m excited to launch a new feature in this newsletter. For the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing insights by Siri Chilazi, Senior Researcher at Harvard Kennedy School Women and Public Policy Program. Siri’s work deeply aligns with the approach we are taking at the Funding Innovation Studio. Siri also participated in helping us design one of this year’s sprints and will join us at the Sprint Showcase on October 30th. This post was originally published on LinkedIn and is shared here with permission.
The myth of meritocracy in the workplace is pervasive, but research tells a different story.
When someone recognizes your potential - and a system is in place to nurture it - it’s often the missing piece of the puzzle.
Consider this:
In Florida's Broward County, a simple change to how gifted students were identified led to an 80% increase in Black students and a 130% increase in Hispanic students participating in those programs, as economists David Card and Laura Giuliano found.
The small change?
Moving from subjective teacher/parent referrals to universal screening.
This is a powerful reminder that in workplaces, competence and potential are often in the eye of the beholder. We tend to spot talent more easily in those who fit our preconceived notions of what "great" looks like.
So, the next time you hear someone say they only hire or promote the "best people," ask yourself:
Who gets to decide what "best" looks like? And how might we redesign our systems to uncover hidden talent?
I’d love to hear about the steps your organization has taken to make talent identification more objective and fair. Share with me in the comments below! 👇
The Funding Innovation Studio is a non-profit program, founded by LabCentral and led by Beth McKeon, with a mission to increase funding inclusion, access, and opportunity for women and BIPOC founders in the life sciences.
The Funding Innovation Studio convenes and supports innovators from across VC, universities, and entrepreneurial support organizations as they run rapid design sprints to solve the persistent systemic barriers and bias in the fundraising and capital deployment process. The Funding Innovation Studio has an open-source policy, sharing the wins and fails from these experiments here on Substack and with its community of practitioners with the goal to see widespread adoption and replication of emerging best practices in this field.