Beyond the Tech: Innovating Responsibly Across Your Company

Responsible Innovation is about more than technology — It is a lens that informs every decision across product, business model, culture, and operations. Hear from leaders who have built structures to bring responsible innovation to every function across their company and how these activities have supported growth and long term value.

Toyin Ajayi, MD of Cityblock Health and Dr. Rachel Gillum of Salesforce joined Laurie Segall of Dot Dot Dot Media for a rich discussion on how responsible innovation involves all functions of a business. They brought depth and real stories on how responsible innovation has shaped internal decisions from core business design to new feature and product reviews.

Key Takeaways:

  • Responsible Innovation supports growth and long-term value. It impacts all aspects of a technology business: who, what, why, how, and what’s measured.
  • Need to define values really clearly on day one. Be meticulous about it. Make sure that policies and processes link back to values and purpose; revisit values and purpose every time there’s a strategic level set.
  • Normalize that hard problems take a long time to solve - and raise funds within that time horizon.
  • In healthcare, the business principle aligns with the ethical imperative to fix it and transform the payment structure, because it is actually more expensive to provide healthcare in a dysfunctional way. “This is not working for anybody.”
  • Salesforce has an Ethical and Humane Use of Technology office working on the difficult tradeoffs between accessing certain markets, mitigating harms to underserved groups, and deploying AI responsibly.

Supplementary Resources:

  1. How to build a compelling mission statement
  2. An Inside look at Cityblock Health
  3. WEF Case Study on Salesforce Office of Ethical + Humane Tech

Session Speakers

Toyin Ajayi, MD

Co-Founder and CEO, Cityblock Health

Dr. Toyin Ajayi is Co-Founder and CEO of Cityblock Health, a health and social services company focused on providing a path to healthier communities through a digitally enabled, integrated medical, behavioral health, and social service delivery model for underserved urban populations. Previously, she was chief medical officer of Commonwealth Care Alliance and is a board-certified family physician and continues to practice primary care and hospital medicine, focused on patients with chronic, complex, and end-of-life needs.

Learn more

Rachel Gillum, PhD

Vice President of Ethical & Humane Use of Technology, Salesforce

Dr. Rachel Gillum is the Vice President of Ethical and Humane Use of Technology at Salesforce. She is a leader with experience driving strategic initiatives within multinational corporations, the U.S. government and academia, helping organizations understand, navigate and mitigate geopolitical and ethical risks that can negatively impact society as well as consumer brands.

Learn more

Laurie Segall

Co-Founder and Executive Producer, Dot Dot Dot Media

Laurie Segall is Co-Founder and Executive Producer of Dot Dot Dot Media. She specializes in news from Silicon Valley, emerging technology companies, and venture capital and served as a senior technology correspondent and editor-at-large at CNN for more than a decade. Segall was named to Forbes’ ‘30 Under 30’, Mashable’s ‘Seven Top Journalists to Subscribe to on Facebook. She has also worked as a correspondent at 60 Minutes and spoken at industry conferences, including Internet Week New York and SXSW, where she led CNN’s technology coverage.

Learn more

We want to hear from you!

Inspired by this session? Have questions and want to learn more? Responsible Innovation Labs is all about community, and fostering compelling conversations like these. Let us know what you think, and share your thoughts with us below.

Thank you! Your submission has been received. We'll be in touch!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.