Louis CarterFounder and Chief Executive Officer, Best Practice Institute · Founder and CEO, Best Practice Institute - Most Loved Workplace® | Organizational Psychologist | Creator of AI Workplace Intelligence and Employer Branding Platform

20% of Innovators are Neurodivergent: Don't Waste Their Talent! #shorts

3 Apr 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:28

In this brief YouTube short, Speaker A asks how companies can create lasting neurodiversity initiatives rather than short‑term pushes. Speaker B shares an estimate from his decades‑long experience in design, machinery, and invention: roughly 20 % of the innovators he’s known—patent holders, shop owners, and engineers—are autistic, dyslexic, or have ADHD, though many were never formally diagnosed. He notes that today these neurodivergent individuals are often funneled into special education, denied hands‑on learning opportunities, and end up playing video games or collecting disability benefits instead of applying their talents to practical work like fixing power poles. The dialogue highlights the waste of talent, the systemic barriers in education and employment, and the need for companies to develop sustainable, systemic neurodiversity practices.

Chapters

You know what, let me ask you a question going back to neurodiversity. You know, um, what would you say, you know, your advice for how a company can actually create sustainable changes in these neurodiversity efforts instead of these short-lived pushes? Like, what's the— what is the— should the larger system be like?
I'm going to estimate that about 20% of the people I work with, people that were doing design work, machinery, inventing, people with patents, people with big machine shops and welding shops, people I worked with over a long career. I've been around since the early '70s. 20% people owning big businesses, either autistic, dyslexic, or ADHD. 20% of them. I went back to all the jobs, I wrote down the names. They were never formally diagnosed. These people now retiring, ones I worked with, shun— now the kids are shunted in special ed. They never get a chance to do hands-on things. They never get a chance in school to show the things that they're good at because those classes have been taken out. They're playing video games in the basement. They ought to be out fixing the power poles that are about ready to fall over that I just saw the other day.
And they're not— you're noticing these systems and they're going and playing video games and this is being wasted, really. And so is it potentially— they're not even getting jobs in the video game industry. Yeah, they're not even getting—
they're not even getting jobs there.
They're collecting a disability check.