Periodic Reporting for period 1 - DD-SCAN (DD-SCAN – AI-based language and multimedia bias checker for corporate communication content)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2019-11-01 do 2020-04-30
Develop Diverse is a technology-based company with the goal of making diversity and inclusion the new norm.
Globally, companies in the tech, media and telecommunications industries are already short more than 1.1M skilled workers. By 2030, a massive shortage of around 4.3M workers is expected, which is forecast to stifle growth for tech-related organizations and forcing them to forego €450Bn in unrealized revenues. Unfortunately, women and minorities are discouraged from applying to many tech-related organizations due to the lack of diversity they see on companies’ corporate communication, such as websites, social media, and job ads, and as well the lack of inclusive culture and feeling of belonging resulting from the internal corporate communication in the form of emails and chats.
Today, organizations have no way of preventing these unconscious biases in a cost-effective manner. The main method used is unconscious bias trainings, which has no effect on the external corporate communication and very little on the internal communication. They are time consuming and only given to managers and thus not scalable and, as a consequence, they are not effective. The standard way of creating content and communicating internally presents 3 major issues: 1) organizations that lack gender and ethnic diversity are 67% more likely to underperform financially compared to their industry peers; 2) massive €1M extra hiring costs annually for large tech-related organizations, as compared to other industries, and; 3) a huge impact on employee retention. Women and other under-represented groups have up to 3.5x higher turnover than represented groups.
To attract and retain the best tech talent, organizations are desperate to create a more inclusive and innovative culture, and leaders, recruiters and communication managers are keener than ever to adopt solutions that expand their pool of skilled applicants. Indeed, more organizations are implementing Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) policies and pressure is mounting as countries like Germany, France, Iceland, Norway and Denmark enforce regulations requiring gender equality and diversity within companies. The need has been present for the past 5 years.
The main objective of the DD-SCAN project is to launch the full-feature DD-SCAN product on the European market by Q1 2023. In order to do this, we need to perform a multi-country pilot to validate the value proposition of our innovation across a large number of users, industry sectors and cultures. Thus, the conclusion of our Phase 1 Feasibility Study is to continue the DD-SCAN project.
Globally, companies in the tech, media and telecommunications industries are already short more than 1.1M skilled workers. By 2030, a massive shortage of around 4.3M workers is expected, which is forecast to stifle growth for tech-related organizations and forcing them to forego €450Bn in unrealized revenues. Unfortunately, women and minorities are discouraged from applying to many tech-related organizations due to the lack of diversity they see on companies’ corporate communication, such as websites, social media, and job ads, and as well the lack of inclusive culture and feeling of belonging resulting from the internal corporate communication in the form of emails and chats.
Today, organizations have no way of preventing these unconscious biases in a cost-effective manner. The main method used is unconscious bias trainings, which has no effect on the external corporate communication and very little on the internal communication. They are time consuming and only given to managers and thus not scalable and, as a consequence, they are not effective. The standard way of creating content and communicating internally presents 3 major issues: 1) organizations that lack gender and ethnic diversity are 67% more likely to underperform financially compared to their industry peers; 2) massive €1M extra hiring costs annually for large tech-related organizations, as compared to other industries, and; 3) a huge impact on employee retention. Women and other under-represented groups have up to 3.5x higher turnover than represented groups.
To attract and retain the best tech talent, organizations are desperate to create a more inclusive and innovative culture, and leaders, recruiters and communication managers are keener than ever to adopt solutions that expand their pool of skilled applicants. Indeed, more organizations are implementing Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) policies and pressure is mounting as countries like Germany, France, Iceland, Norway and Denmark enforce regulations requiring gender equality and diversity within companies. The need has been present for the past 5 years.
The main objective of the DD-SCAN project is to launch the full-feature DD-SCAN product on the European market by Q1 2023. In order to do this, we need to perform a multi-country pilot to validate the value proposition of our innovation across a large number of users, industry sectors and cultures. Thus, the conclusion of our Phase 1 Feasibility Study is to continue the DD-SCAN project.
This Feasibility Study has enabled our company to perform key activities for validating the commercial and technical feasibility of our DD-SCAN project. Firstly, we implemented our DD-SCAN Beta version at 4 large Danish and Global organizations, performed 7 product demonstrations and workshops with customers and carried out 8 high-impact communication activities. Main results include: (1) signing contracts with 4 large customers for full-year subscriptions of our current DD-SCAN version; (2) an additional 2 contracts currently in negotiation phase; (3) attracting a seed investment from a European investor; making agreements with a large promotion partner and a re-seller partner in Scandinavia; (4) selected as one of the Top 10 Startup Teams in Denmark; (5) updated product software architecture to make DD-SCAN more robust, secure and scalable, and; (6) refreshing our company website (www.developdiverse.com) and product access page (www.dd-scan.com).
Secondly, we have extended our IP asset portfolio and guaranteed our freedom to operate in our primary target markets – EU, USA, Australia and New Zealand. During Phase 1, we have worked closely with our patent firm, as well as the Danish Patent and Trademark Office, to develop and implement a robust IP protection strategy, performing various activities to ensure our successful market entry and later scale-up – an Intellectual Property Pre-diagnostic Report identifying our key IP assets, carry out an ongoing technology watch and a thorough FTO Report. Moreover, we have strengthened our employee and partner contracts to further protect our company IP.
Finally, based on the information gathered, we performed a detailed bottom-up market analysis including a 5-year revenue and expense forecast, user needs analysis, competitor analysis, business model analysis, risk analysis and financial plan. Unique selling points were also refined and a step-by-step commercialization plan was developed. All of this information has been compiled into a detailed Business Plan covering 2020-2025. Fundamental for reaching our ambitions, this Feasibility Study and Business Plan will also generate confidence among our customers, partners and future investors. Specifically, we will use this Feasibility Study and Business Plan to attract external funding (including EIC Accelerator Pilot) for the completion of the final phase before market launch – validating the DD-SCAN product in a large-scale multi-country pilot.
Secondly, we have extended our IP asset portfolio and guaranteed our freedom to operate in our primary target markets – EU, USA, Australia and New Zealand. During Phase 1, we have worked closely with our patent firm, as well as the Danish Patent and Trademark Office, to develop and implement a robust IP protection strategy, performing various activities to ensure our successful market entry and later scale-up – an Intellectual Property Pre-diagnostic Report identifying our key IP assets, carry out an ongoing technology watch and a thorough FTO Report. Moreover, we have strengthened our employee and partner contracts to further protect our company IP.
Finally, based on the information gathered, we performed a detailed bottom-up market analysis including a 5-year revenue and expense forecast, user needs analysis, competitor analysis, business model analysis, risk analysis and financial plan. Unique selling points were also refined and a step-by-step commercialization plan was developed. All of this information has been compiled into a detailed Business Plan covering 2020-2025. Fundamental for reaching our ambitions, this Feasibility Study and Business Plan will also generate confidence among our customers, partners and future investors. Specifically, we will use this Feasibility Study and Business Plan to attract external funding (including EIC Accelerator Pilot) for the completion of the final phase before market launch – validating the DD-SCAN product in a large-scale multi-country pilot.
DD-SCAN is far superior compared to current solutions on the market as it enables users to automatically identify the main social biases across job ads, websites and PR/Social Media. This is possible thanks to our science-based psycholinguistic framework and unique dataset that has been validated in the field. DD-SCAN offers best value for money with tangible demonstrated effectivity in the number and diversity of skilled applicants. It overcomes the known problems of today’s solutions and will ultimately create a new standard for developing recruitment and communication content via an effective, convenient and affordable tool.
The societal benefits of DD-SCAN are fully aligned with the EU’s Strategic Engagement for Gender Equality, as well as UN Sustainable Development Goals 5 and 8. DD-SCAN enables organizations to ensure inclusive branding by removing and replacing unconscious bias across all of their communication channels, making it highly effective to build diverse and successful teams. As tech-related organizations attract a more diverse qualified group of employees, the more women and minorities will be motivated to join such organizations. This will motivate younger generations of women and minorities to pursue careers in tech, thus creating a positive impact on a wider scale.
The societal benefits of DD-SCAN are fully aligned with the EU’s Strategic Engagement for Gender Equality, as well as UN Sustainable Development Goals 5 and 8. DD-SCAN enables organizations to ensure inclusive branding by removing and replacing unconscious bias across all of their communication channels, making it highly effective to build diverse and successful teams. As tech-related organizations attract a more diverse qualified group of employees, the more women and minorities will be motivated to join such organizations. This will motivate younger generations of women and minorities to pursue careers in tech, thus creating a positive impact on a wider scale.