Hello Diversity! Digital Ideation Hackathon: Fostering Gender Equality in Digital Innovation

Abstract

This panel report outlines key insights from the Hello Diversity! Hackathon on gender equality in the workplace held digitally in November 2020. The one-day event with more than 150 participants featured panel discussions and ideation sessions to enable the participants to develop innovative tools, strategies, and processes to minimize gender inequality in workforces involved in digital innovation. Overall, the hackathon aimed to build bridges between research and practice to derive answers on how existing barriers towards more gender equality in digital innovation processes and outcomes can be addressed. The theoretically informed challenges that were tackled during the event concerned topics such as stereotypes and discrimination, incentivizing workforce equality, and necessary support infrastructures in public and private spheres. The developed solutions indicate that much remains to be done to address the lack of processes, organizational structures, and holistic knowledge regarding the importance and benefits of diversity and inclusion in digital innovation. The hackathon culminated in pitches made on the envisioned solutions to kick-start their implementation and encourage research support and progress.