After over ten years of guiding, navigating, and building businesses in some of the world’s most intricate markets, I’ve realized that the true risk often lies in what’s not visible; it’s what’s absent. It’s not the figures in the spreadsheet, but the person who wasn’t included in the meeting. It’s not the strategic ideas presented, but the overlooked question that no one raised.

Inclusion has become a buzzword, frequently mentioned in presentations and discussions. However, it still falls short in critical areas: who receives funding, who gets a seat at the table, who conducts the evaluations, and whose voice is heard during strategic planning.

The consequences of neglecting this inclusion are not theoretical, but tangible: overlooked market opportunities, unsuccessful market penetrations, poor performance among diverse consumer segments, and deals based on incomplete information. Essentially, it’s a recipe for a shaky foundation for growth.

Exclusion is expensive

Every leader, investor, and decision-maker in boardrooms has blind spots, and that includes myself. It’s a human trait. We often emphasize traits of a strong founder, such as ambition, vision, and execution. However, we don’t frequently inquire about their perspective. Are they addressing a problem they’ve personally faced? Do they have enough proximity to their audience to comprehend the entire situation?

Inclusion isn’t solely about fairness or generosity. It’s about precision. By excluding regional insights, local entrepreneurs, or diverse leadership, you risk missing crucial indicators that influence the success of a deal. I have seen ventures with significant financial backing falter in emerging markets because the only advisors were external consultants lacking real-world experience in the area. They possessed financial resources, but lacked contextual understanding.

The risk we don’t quantify

When assessing risks, we look at market conditions, regulatory challenges, and customer acquisition expenses, but we seldom reflect on who was absent when decisions were made. Whose insights could have altered the outcome of this deal?

As an international lawyer, advisor and entrepreneur, I have led due diligence processes on everything from major infrastructure bids to startup fundraises. In every case, the question of who gets consulted is as important as what gets audited. Inclusion becomes a form of risk management, not an HR initiative.

The investor’s blind spot

We claim to back disruptive ideas, but the real disruption is often ignored, solutions coming from outside traditional networks. Women founders in underserved markets building scalable businesses. Local entrepreneurs with community-rooted traction. People solving problems they’ve lived. Quiet operators reshaping industries on the ground.

We reward polish. We fund confidence. But we miss something bigger — proximity. The most undervalued trait in deal-making today is proximity — proximity to the problem, the market and the people being served. We over-index on pitch fluency and underweight contextual fluency. We reward those who can speak the language of investors, but overlook those who speak the language of the communities they serve.

The blind spot? Too many investors still treat inclusion as a social checkbox, rather than a strategic advantage. In opaque or volatile markets, where data is incomplete and relationships matter, a founder’s proximity is not a liability; it’s leverage. When investors fail to see this, they don’t just exclude people. They exclude upside.

The strongest investors are evolving. They know how to read beyond the numbers. They’re not just evaluating execution, they’re assessing depth. Inclusion is about better data, better insight and better decisions. It’s not a PR move, it’s a performance edge.

Rewriting the playbook

If inclusion feels like a nice-to-have, it’s because we’re still viewing it from the top down. What if instead, we treated it as a strategic necessity? Imagine due diligence that factors in representation, not as a gesture, but as a governance mechanism. Imagine a risk matrix that quantifies groupthink.

This isn’t theoretical. Funds are starting to integrate inclusion into their operational models, not just in who they invest in, but who advises them, who reviews their pipelines and how they train partners to evaluate value through broader lenses.

From optics to outcomes

We’re past the point where inclusion is about headlines. In high-stakes businesses, it’s about outcomes. Companies that outperform are not only diverse in identity, but in insight. They draw from a richer range of perspectives and are less likely to miss critical data because they design systems that look beyond sameness.

The most successful leaders I’ve worked with — the ones who really move markets — share one trait: curiosity. They don’t assume they’ve got it all figured out; they build rooms full of people who can challenge their blind spots. If you’re making high-stakes decisions, whether as an investor, a policymaker or a founder, and the room looks just like you, you’re already exposed.

The future of serious business is not just inclusive. It’s integrated. It understands that who is in the room changes what gets built. So here’s the question I’d leave you with:

What are you not seeing? And who do you need to invite in to help you see it?