McKinsey Inclusive Business Accelerator

Advancing racial equity and inclusive economic empowerment

Minority business enterprises (MBE) often lack access to a robust ecosystem of capital and business resources because of long-standing structural barriers to starting and growing a business.

The COVID-19 pandemic has worsened these issues and further widened the racial wealth gap.

According to a recent report shared by McKinsey’s Institute for Black Economic Mobility, raising awareness and increasing investment in Black-owned businesses could add $290 billion in business equity in the United States.

McKinsey Inclusive Business Accelerator’s mission is to advance racial equity and inclusive economic empowerment. We currently focus on supporting Black business leaders and medium-sized Black-owned businesses.

What we do

Sponsored by the Operations Practice, McKinsey Inclusive Business Accelerator works with Black-owned organizations to support improvements in their manufacturing and supply chain, service operations, and procurement. McKinsey Inclusive Business Accelerator does that across three key areas of support:

Empower conferences and networking

Empower is a McKinsey Inclusive Business Accelerator-supported platform for the Black business community focused on networking and honing leadership skills. We host three quarterly Empower conferences every year. Empower also hosts breakout “Empower Hour” sessions that focus on specific operations topics with McKinsey experts.

Capability building

An online interactive library of best-practice content covering 13 key operations topics across lean-management principles, procurement, and supply-chain essentials. These can be used for individual skill-building or facilitated workshops led by McKinsey experts to help unlock team potential.

Impact partnership

Dedicated teams with cross-operations expertise engage with clients for six-12 weeks. Teams work side-by-side with company executives and decision makers to understand pain points, diagnose problems, design solutions, and kickstart transformations.

Examples of our work

Supporting growth

A team worked with a food ingredient manufacturer and supplier to Fortune 500 corporations. The six-week engagement focused on supporting growth and reducing inventory. The team identified a 16-26 percent recurring cost reduction and 15 percent inventory reduction, and more than a dozen leaders signed up for capability-building courses.

Leadership coaching

We led a three-month coaching effort with an energy-efficiency services provider, advising the CEO and senior leaders to help them align on a holistic growth strategy for the company. Coaching led to consensus by leadership to target four times over revenue by 2024, while staying true to their team’s core values of maintaining a diverse workforce, 100 percent customer satisfaction, and a sustainable workload.

Strengthening talent

A two-phase impact partnership with an automotive OEM subcontractor focused on improving priority operations and performance targets, as well as recruiting and retention. The client achieved a 15-20 percent reduction in production errors and a 30-40 percent reduction in downtime, while enhancing management infrastructure and performance management. On the people side, the client achieved a 15-20 percent increase in recruiting and a 30-35 percent decrease in monthly turnover.

MIBA Voices

New Horizons: Laying the foundation for outsized growth

Through agility and grit, New Horizons Baking Company successfully navigated the disruptions fueled by the Covid-19 pandemic. They partnered with MIBA to focus on building resilience and a stronger foundation for a competitive advantage and outsized growth.