This opinion piece was written by Madeleine Gabriel, Head of Inclusive Innovation at the innovation foundation Nesta. For more like this see our gender equality newsfeed.

In 1637, Amye Everard Ball, a widow, became the first British woman to register a patent. She claimed her method of preparing “tincture of saffron, roses &c” would extend the life of these expensive ingredients,

“...which shall continue and remaine in full strength and virtue for manie yeares more than saffron in the sheyve or leafe vsually doth or can.”

Nearly 400 years later, it’s perhaps a surprise that women inventors are still so few and far between. Over the last 15 years, just 7% of the people who applied for patents in the UK were female. But it’s not only women who are missing.

Recent studies from several countries show than invention is dominated not simply by men, but men from a small section of society. In the United States, children with parents in the top 1% of the income distribution are 10 times more likely to register a patent than those with below-median income parents. White children are three times more likely to become inventors as black children.

Whose problems are we solving?

The history of women’s invention shows that female inventors often hit on ideas that men didn’t see a need for. In the 1940s, Marion Donovan came up with a waterproof nappy cover she called the ‘Boater’. Despite its potential to save mothers hours of drudgery, she couldn’t convince manufacturers to produce it: “I went to all the big names that you could think of and they said, ‘We don’t need it — no woman has ever asked us for that …”. She ended up manufacturing the Boater herself, receiving a patent for it in 1951.

As Donovan’s story illustrates, if a narrow group of people generate new technologies, they may miss the needs and wants of a wider population.

Further, it suggests we are missing out on a lot of talent. The US research paper mentioned above calculated that if women, ethnic minorities and people from lower-income backgrounds invented at the same rate as rich, white men, there would be four times as many inventors in America.

The importance of exposure to innovation

So how could we open up invention to a much more diverse range of people? Research shows that exposure to innovation in childhood makes a critical difference shaping inventive potential. Kids who grow up surrounded by role models — particularly those whose parents are inventors— are much more likely to become inventors themselves.

We can’t change children’s families, but we can give them a chance to meet inventors and try out invention themselves.

At Nesta, we mapped schemes in the UK that promote invention to young people. We found festivals, competitions, courses, after-school clubs and even whole-school approaches.

Fixperts projects challenge young people to research and develop solutions to problems they have identified, sketch out ideas, model prototypes and make a final product. Little Inventors gets children to come up with an idea and draw a picture of their invention — some of these ideas are later turned into real models and products by professional makers and artists. Children entering the Primary Engineer Leaders Award are encouraged to interview an engineer, and then submit an idea for a something an engineer could build to solve a problem.

Are we investing enough?

While there’s a range of schemes out there, they only reach a small number of children. We estimate that in total, invention schemes in the UK reach less than 1.5% of the pupil population each year.

Moreover, opportunities are skewed to particular places and people. Pupils in the South of England (including London) are twice as likely to take part in one of these schemes as those in the Midlands, and 1.6 times as likely as those in the North. Among secondary schools, those with less privileged pupil populations are considerably less likely to take part in invention schemes.

Moving innovation investment upstream

The UK government directs a lot of effort towards optimising tax incentives for innovative firms — these are estimated to cost £4.45bn ($5.6bn) a year. By contrast we seem to be under-investing in building a larger and more diverse pool of future innovators. We think there is a clear case for innovation policymakers to invest more in fostering innovators from an early age, not only supporting business innovation.

And what to focus on? The evidence suggests we need to help children build ‘innovation capital’ — networks, beliefs, behaviours, mindsets that make becoming an inventor more likely. The research base is patchy, and there’s a lot to learn about what works. But we can’t leave the next generation of Marion Donovans undiscovered. — Madeleine Gabriel

(Picture credit: Flickr/NASA)