Inclusion is Innovation
Designing for Belonging Strengthens Business
When Inclusion Isn’t Designed for Us
This essay continues the conversation I began in When the Bubble Never Included You and Difference Is Not a Deficit, where I explored how organizational cultures often overlook those whose ways of thinking, processing, and engaging don’t fit the dominant mold.
Too often, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts remain tethered to visible identifiers. This work must continue. However, for those of us who experience the world differently, those with invisible differences, including neurodivergence and cognitive variance—efforts often stop short of true belonging.
Inclusion must go deeper. We must shift from simply recognizing difference to transforming the environment itself, creating workplaces where creativity and thought emerge naturally. What does it look like to build a space where cognitive difference is not merely tolerated but valued? Where all people can thrive as their authentic selves?
This is not about charity. It’s about leadership. It’s about building systems that unlock talent too often left untapped. Companies like SAP and Microsoft have demonstrated that investing in neurodivergent inclusion drives innovation and ROI (Austin and Pisano).
Redefining Professionalism
Professionalism has long rewarded charisma, speed, and verbal agility, traits too often mistaken for competence (Rommens et al.) but brilliance takes many forms. It may be quiet, deeply reflective, or pattern driven.
We can learn from the spaghetti tower experiment, where kindergartners outperformed MBA graduates in building tall spaghetti-and-marshmallow structures. The lesson, made famous in a TED Talk by Tom Wujec, underscores the value of experimentation over overthinking. Kindergartners dove in through playful experimentation, precisely the kind of adaptive learning that rigid environments often stifle.
Neurodivergent minds frequently bring this same iterative, nonlinear brilliance—if allowed.
To nurture this kind of intelligence, organizations can start by looking at how they define success. Performance rubrics should move beyond a bias for extroversion or quick thinking and instead celebrate depth of insight, collaborative listening, and pattern recognition. Offering asynchronous ways to contribute, including recorded video, written feedback, and chat. This ensures more voices are heard and valued, not just the loudest or fastest in the room.
Designing for Cognitive Accessibility
Accessibility must extend beyond the physical. Neurodivergent employees often face overload, ambiguity, and sensory fatigue in environments not designed with them in mind (Bruyère and Colella).
Rethinking both physical and digital spaces is essential. Sending agendas in advance and summarizing meetings afterward provides clarity. Establishing meeting-free blocks or quiet hours helps reduce sensory and social fatigue. Offering flexible, hybrid options empowers employees to shape how and where they work best. Even simple changes, such as creating sensory-friendly zones or reducing noise in open-plan spaces can help everyone focus and flourish.
Assimilation to Authenticity
Masking, or suppressing neurodivergent traits to fit in, takes a profound psychological toll. Inclusion must offer more than survival in the dominant mold. It must invite thriving as oneself.
As Daniel Coyle writes in The Culture Code, belonging is built through shared vulnerability and small moments of connection. Without these, inclusion remains surface-level. When we normalize authenticity, we strengthen belonging.
Fostering this environment starts with creating space for individuals to share how they communicate and work best, whether through team manuals or casual conversations. Normalizing options like turning off the camera on Zoom or choosing written feedback helps shift expectations away from rigid norms. Asking simple, regular questions such as, “What helps you do your best thinking and work?” signals that authenticity is valued and not just tolerated.
Building Inclusive Hiring & Mentorship Practices
The ROI is clear. Microsoft’s Neurodiversity Hiring Program and SAP’s Autism at Work initiative have boosted innovation while improving retention and loyalty (Austin and Pisano), though traditional hiring practices too often exclude neurodivergent talent.
Organizations should rethink their approach. Interviews that rely on social fluency may miss exceptional candidates. Instead, offering skills-based assessments, project trials, or job previews allows individuals to demonstrate capability in a more authentic way. Partnerships with organizations like Neurodiversity in the Workplace can help connect companies to a broader talent pool. Once hired, neurodivergent employees thrive when paired with mentors trained to understand and support cognitive difference. Mentorship must go beyond skills. It should help cultivate confidence, community, and a sense of belonging.
Normalizing Disclosure Without Pressure
Stigma remains a barrier. Many employees fear disclosing differences due to bias or risk (Richard-Craven). Psychological safety must be the norm, not the exception.
This begins at the top. When executives and managers share success stories of employees who have chosen to self-disclose and thrived, it sends a powerful message. Clear, visible guidance on how to access accommodations should be built into orientation strategies and not buried in HR manuals. Additionally, language matters. Using terms like neurodivergent instead of deficient or even disabled signals that cognitive difference is an asset, not a liability. In fact, if all people with disabilities were instead called differently abled, we could build a world that considers normative practices that include many variations of what standards around ability looks like.
Everyday Advocacy: Everyone Has a Role
Culture shifts through daily actions. You don’t need to be an executive or company owner to drive change. Whether you are neurodivergent or an ally, your voice matters.
Change starts with one simple action, share resources. Start with this series. Post this blog in a team chat or mention it in a meeting. Speak up when you see someone’s difference being misread as disengagement or incompetence. Be willing to experiment. Try new ways of collaborating, giving feedback, or structuring work. Culture evolves when people across the organization take small, consistent steps toward inclusion.
Why This Matters for Everyone
This is not only about doing the right thing. It’s also about building better businesses. When employees feel seen and supported, turnover decreases. Unique thinkers drive breakthrough innovation. When inclusion is real—trust, collaboration, and belonging deepen across the organization.
Companies like SAP, Microsoft, and JPMorgan Chase report measurable business gains from neurodivergent inclusion (Austin and Pisano). This is leadership worth learning from.
Conclusion: Redesigning the Room
Inclusion is not simply inviting people into the existing room. It’s reimagining the room entirely—its pace, its language, its metrics of success.
As I’ve written before, inclusion must be cognitive, cultural, and structural. Neurodivergent people are not deficits to manage; we are deep wells of insight, creativity, and resilience. We are not your challenge—we are your opportunity.
For DEI to be future-ready, it must evolve. That evolution begins when we listen deeply and question what we consider professional. It begins when we trust that those who have been long misunderstood may hold the keys to what others cannot yet see.
Explore the Series:
· Part 1: When the Bubble Never Included You
· Part 2: Difference Is Not a Deficit
· Part 3: Inclusion is Innovation
· Main Page: Michelle Ried on Substack
Works Cited
Austin, Robert D., and Gary P. Pisano. “Neurodiversity as a Competitive Advantage.” Harvard Business Review, May–June 2017, https://hbr.org/2017/05/neurodiversity-as-a-competitive-advantage.
Bruyère, Susanne M., and Adrienne Colella. Neurodiversity in the Workplace: An Overview of Interests, Issues and Opportunities. Taylor & Francis, 2022. https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/id/d77b6b1d-9111-4004-a35d-b2f3257139a9/9781003023616_1043249781003023616-2.pdf.
Coyle, Daniel. The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups. Bantam, 2018.
Richard-Craven, Maya. “Is Neurodiversity Under Attack? Yes. Here's Why.” Forbes, 1 Apr. 2025, https://www.forbes.com/sites/mayarichard-craven/2025/04/01/is-neurodiversity-under-attack-yes-heres-why/.
Rommens, Thijs, et al. “Advantages and Challenges of Neurodiversity Employment in Organizations.” Journal of Management & Organization, vol. 29, no. 3, 2023, pp. 546–565. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/jmo.2022.51.
Wujec, Tom. Build a Tower, Build a Team. TED, 2010. (YouTube).
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