The importance of diverse opinions in your company

“A study of the top fifty game-changing innovations over a hundred-year period showed that nearly 80 percent of those innovations were sparked by someone whose primary expertise was outside the field in which the innovation breakthrough took place.”

I came across this today on the Dan Pink blog, which in turn took the quote from a book called See New Now by Jerry de Jaager and Jim Ericson.  This very idea has led to the success of ventures such as Innocentive, a website that lets you tap into the skills of a wide range of individuals, with the result that many of their problems are solved by people working outside of the area of their day job.

All of which makes yesterdays announcement that recruiters are implicitely discriminating against candidates based on the ethnicity of their names.  We're living in a knowledge economy where competition comes from around the world.  Whilst this poses many risks to your prosperity it also offers an incredible array of opportunities too.  The key however is to tap into talent from as far and wide as you can.  It's so common to only hire people in our own image but leaving aside the dubious ethical stance such a practice takes, it is stifling your business like never before.

Taking lessons from nature

Nature has evolved into the wonderfully complex system in large part because of this diversity.  At a genetic level we're not all clones due to the high risk of disease wiping out a species as a result of genetic conformity.  A 2007 study conducted by the National Science Foundation found that genetic diversity and biodiversity are dependent upon each other - that diversity within a species is necessary to maintain diversity among species, and vice versa.

The importance of diversity in nature is most when change occurs.  A species with a large degree of diversity will have a much better chance of finding a best fit within this new environment, and it is just the same in the corporate world.

How diverse is your team?  What do you do to encourage diversity of opinion?