America's Most “Innovative” Leaders
The header from Forbes’s list of “America’s Most Innovative Leaders”
Last week, Forbes published their list of America’s Most Innovative Leaders. Like every business publication listicle before it, the piece was necessarily reductive. Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk tied for first, West-coast tech ruled the list, and, notably, only one woman made the cut.
As you can imagine, Twitter took notice.
Seems only one woman, maybe one Black man, zero non-binary people in "America's Most Innovative Leaders" list published by @Forbes presented by @HSBC.
— Natalia Oberti Noguera (@nakisnakis) September 6, 2019
Methodology's flawed--these results don't represent "the most creative and successful minds of today."https://t.co/N038pWmGHq
The one and only woman on Forbes' list of 100 Most Innovative Leaders is an outline of a man https://t.co/IkJziPYmH5 pic.twitter.com/NFQi3301f2
— David Weiner (@daweiner) September 6, 2019
On @Forbes's list of America's 100 "Most Innovative Leaders," there are twice as many men named Stanley as there are women of any name.
— Anand Giridharadas (@AnandWrites) September 6, 2019
And there are only two Stanleys.
That's right: 99 of America's 100 most innovative leaders are men, @Forbes says. https://t.co/ZnyaRe8N58
This morning, Forbes published a message from editor Randall Lane titled, “Opportunity Missed: Reflecting On The Lack Of Women On Our Most Innovative Leaders List.” Lane blames the pool of leaders that Forbes was ranking from, writing:
This pool ultimately proved the problem: women, as we all know, are poorly represented at the top of the largest corporations (just 5% of the S&P 500) and fare even worse among growing public tech companies. In other words, for all our carefully-calibrated methodology, women never had much of a chance here.
No doubt there are serious, systemic inequities that contribute to the lack of women-led companies (not to mention companies led by gender-nonconforming and nonbinary folks) that would be under consideration for this list. Oppression and lack of opportunity compound, so if white cis women are not in Forbes’s sight, what chance do women of color, disabled women, or trans folks stand? This better-late-than-never reflection is right on that front: we need to get more people who aren’t white cis men in the running for lists like this. There’s a lot of work to do there, including everything from ensuring equal pay for equal work, securing comprehensive healthcare and family leave, and teaching everyone to notice and combat their own unconscious biases. That work is absolutely necessary, but it doesn’t let Forbes off the hook.
The homogeneity of the Forbes list brings up another question, on that is vital as we consider the impact we want business to have on the world and on our lives: what exactly do we mean by innovation?
The Forbes list ranks innovation along the following metrics, according to this September 3 piece on their methodology:
[T]he leader’s (1) media reputation for innovation, (2) social connections/social capital related to innovation, (3) track record of market value creation at the company they lead, and (4) investor expectations of future growth and innovation at their firm, as represented by the company’s innovation premium (the same metric we use to rank Forbes Most Innovative Companies).
Those metrics track “innovation” as a buzzword, but nothing that rings as truly innovative to me. When I look for an innovative leader, I look for someone who is creative in how they approach not only what they make, but how they make it. An innovative leader that I’m interested in following is relentless in their pursuit of improvement, both externally in what they produce and internally in how they lead their team to get there. When I think about the innovative leaders in my network, I find myself picturing people who marry their creativity and drive to deep compassion and curiosity, which I get is harder to quantify and process into a list.
It’s worth noting that the list methodology does not account for what the study authors call “innovation leadership skills” — though they will gladly sell you their book about how you can cultivate innovation leadership skills yourself. I would hope that one of the skills innovative leaders will look to cultivate in the future is remembering that women exist.
Who are the innovative leaders in you admire? Let us know at @WomxnTalkMoney with the hashtag #InnovativeWomxn on Twitter.
