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Susanne Justesen

Business researcher and speaker specializing in the role of diversity in innovation

Susanne Justesen is a business researcher at Copenhagen Business School, where she recently finalized her PhD about innovation processes in multinational corporations. The focus in her research is the need for diversity – and the threat of homogeneity - amongst employees in creating and sustaining corporate innovation.

Besides her academic work, Susanne is also running her own company Innoversity with offices in Copenhagen and New York; she writes her own column about innovation and diversity in the Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende; and she organizes the international conference INNOVATING WITH DIVERSITY. In all of these settings, her role has been centered on breaking, crossing and spanning the boundaries between disciplines and cultures so as to benefit from this diversity in corporate innovation.

Susanne Justesen is thus a strong advocate for the need of diversity in most organizations, especially organizations striving for innovation. According to Susanne, more organizations need to become better at embracing 'the weird, the non-fitters and the noise-makers into their organizations' - thereby making away with homogeneity both in and around the innovation process. Because innovative organizations need innovative people, and such innovative people are usually different – and more importantly, they will tend to flee homogeneous organizations. How is the state of homogeneity in your company?

In her work with innovation and diversity, Susanne Justesen has been working with a range of different organizations and clients on how to become better at innovating with diversity; primarily in Denmark but also in Europe and the US. Noteworthy among these are Procter & Gamble, Kraft Food, ECCI (UK), LEGO, ARLA Foods, Novozymes, LEO Pharma, Danske Bank, TDC, Danish Broadcasting Corporation, Jyske Bank and Pfizer.


Innovating with diversity: how?
Innovation really is about combining knowledge, insights and ideas that have not previously been exchanged and combined. Therefore, innovation needs for the people involved in the innovation process to be very different from each other, wherefore the innovation process should be characterized by a high degree of diversity. Yet, too many organizations seem unaware of the potentials of diversity in innovation, and this talk will highlight how, with relatively simple things, your organization can become better at benefiting from and leveraging your existing diversity, and thus improve the overall innovation performance.

What is the link between innovation and diversity?
Susanne has been researching and working with the link between innovation and diversity since 2000, and has identified five ways in which diversity can be used to leverage innovation. This talk takes you through each of these five links, and explains how a corporation or an organization can benefit from each of these five links in their innovation efforts.

How do we become more innovative?
One way in which to become more innovative is to become better at teaming up with the right people both internally and externally, when a new project is to be launched or a new group is to be formed. Another important way is to ensure both awareness of and access to the different competences and ideas within a particular group, and how to use these ideas. Both of these aspects are important ways in which organisations can become more innovative in project work, and this talk will provide some basic advice as to how this can be obtained.

When do we need diversity? And how to get it!
Diversity is both necessary and needed when it comes to innovation processes and projects, but similarity can be equally important when it comes to implementation and efficiency. Most organisations can benefit from becoming better at balancing between similarity and diversity, when do we need group members that are different? When do we need someone who is similar? This talk helps you answer these questions, just as it provides general advice as to how to find and get access to such diversity (or similarity).

How to network differently – and benefit from open innovation?
The people you know and have access to are paramount to your individual AND organizational innovation performance. Employees today can also be described as managers of their own knowledge, and in order to manage your own knowledge well, you need to exchange and combine that knowledge with others, both within and outside of the organizations. Many organizations are now seeing the need to open up their innovation process and to invite external connections and partners to participate and collaborate within their innovation process. But how to identify relevant partners and who to work with? How do you build and sustain a network of connections? This is what this talk about networking for open innovation will address.


Travels from Denmark

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