Diversity is a priority, act on it now (with 40 ideas from Inspirefest to start with)

Lucy Fuggle
5 min readJul 2, 2016

I owe a lot to the world becoming a more diverse place. I believe I’ve had more opportunities available to me than any other generation, especially as a twenty-three year old woman entering STEM from the arts.

Yet there’s still some way to go for diversity, especially in the workplace. This is why Inspirefest exists. The three-day event in Dublin is proof that the world is bloody good at a lot of things. We’re imagining, collaborating, and getting shit done instead of talking.

Vicki Saunders, CEO of SheEO at Inspirefest.

Thank you, Ann O'Dea, for making it happen and to every speaker that got on the stage. Let’s follow your lead and get doing.

“Catch the heart off guard and blow it open” — Seamus Heaney, “Postscript”

When building a business…

What problem do I see that I can begin to solve? How can I get the data, create my solution, and get others around me? — @julescoleman

Don’t make excuses. Many big ideas start as side projects that don’t require capital to start. Entrepreneurship is not just for those who can self-fund anymore. — @julescoleman

Start with the narrowest, smallest niche you can. Drill it down. The one size fits none approach fails miserably. — Robin Chase

Amplify the voice of your end user. Protect the voice of the innocent bystander. — Lorna M. Ross, Mayo Clinic

Design for the exception. Prioritise user experience. — @elizejackson

Choose the simpler, more human approach. It often yields better results. — @julescoleman

Leverage existing excess capacity, as Airbnb did for spare rooms and Zipcar did for cars. Your results can be bigger than anything the big corporations have ever seen. — Robin Chase

“Innovation is all about timing. You can feel like your idea is really good, but it’s all about context”. — Lorna M Ross, Director of Design at Mayo Clinic

Scale your business…

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