Rotman professor, Sarah Kaplan, champions inclusive product and service innovation—for social good and competitive advantage—in this interview for IEDP. The idea that business innovations should appeal equally to everyone seems obvious, because it makes good business sense. Yet, in discussing Inclusive Business Innovation, her new program at the University of Toronto Kaplan tries to show how the commercial aspect follows from being more inclusive. “I sometimes resist the business case argument, because it downplays the importance of just being good for the community. But Inclusive Business Innovation is about win-wins.”  Unfortunately, this clear business and social win often does not happen.

In this interview for Harvard Business School’s Institue for Business in Global Society, Sarah Kaplan says that to drive meaningful change in board diversity and corporate purpose, businesses and regulators must move beyond soft-touch approaches and focus on thorough implementation and understanding of the challenges, as evidenced by research on disclosure regulations and their varied impact on firms.

It's tempting to think that an inclusive approach to analytics is just an add-on to a day-to-day job, or worse, isn't profitable. But those are all just myths, say GATE's Sarah Kaplan and Lechin Lu in an interview for the Rotman Insights Hub.

Sarah Kaplan, Professor of Strategic Management at the Rotman School of Business at the University of Toronto. Kaplan won an Aspen Institute Ideas Worth Teaching Award for her course, The 360º Corporation, which investigates a single firm from a full spectrum of economic and social perspectives. We spoke with Professor Kaplan about her course.

When it comes to the effects of the COVID-19 crisis, all things are not created equal. By all accounts, women’s finances and career growth have been disproportionately affected. The lion’s share of domestic responsibilities — taking care of children, helping with virtual school, looking after ailing family members — has also fallen to women. TVO.org speaks with Sarah Kaplan about the so-called she-cession, how women can guard against losing their hard-won place in the workforce — and how the pandemic could create meaningful change.

Research2Reality profiles Sarah Kaplan: “This researcher knows, in the pursuit of gender equality, there are rarely easy and straightforward answers. Nevertheless, she persists.”

Women of Influence spoke with Sarah Kaplan, Founder and Director of GATE, to get her take on why it’s important to look at COVID with an intersectional gendered lens, where we are headed with respect to gender equality, and what we can be doing to build a more inclusive future. 

This Research2Reality interview asks the question: Can innovation change the conversation on gender equality Researchers at the University of Toronto’s Institute for Gender and the Economy — Rotman believe that it can. Director Sarah Kaplan works to dispel myths and provide new angles to tackle gaps in gender equality.

Sarah Kaplan and Jake Stika from Next Gen Men discuss how organizations that invested in diversity and inclusion before COVID-19 proved far more resilient during the crisis, showing that equity is a core business strategy rather than an optional add-on. The pandemic has exposed deeply gendered impacts, from women bearing disproportionate unpaid labor and domestic violence to men facing identity challenges as traditional roles are disrupted, revealing how systemic inequality shapes outcomes we rarely examine. The crisis presents a rare opportunity to rethink GDP, expand gender-based policy analysis, challenge consumerism, and open up rigid gender norms around caregiving and employment. Both speakers argue that recovery must be built through a gender lens from the start, because the window for meaningful systemic change is open right now.

In this interview for Research2Reality, “So what’s really interesting is a lot of people think that our challenge with gender equality just had to do with that we have biases in our brains, and so if we can only fix our brains, we would somehow fix the problem.” Unfortunately, the problems go beyond psychological barriers, extending into the institutions that influence how people behave. Real change takes more than flipping a switch in our minds because we also need to change the foundations of the society that perpetuates the divide.

It's said that a rising tide lifts all boats. That's usually considered a good thing. But what if the economic growth that the expression refers to actually results in widespread flooding... To continue the metaphor... Acting as a driving force behind ecological destruction? In a conversation with host Steve Paikin of TVO’s The Agenda, we addressed: What are the consequences of endless economic expansion?

Corporations are critical players in Canada's economy - they create the wealth, jobs, goods, and services we all need. And increasingly that's prompted people to see them as more than commercial enterprises, but as key social actors too. The Agenda welcomes Sarah Kaplan to discuss her new book, "The 360 degree Corporation: From Stakeholder Trade-offs to Transformation," about how businesses are confronting some of those new expectations.