One Apple A Day #125
Diversity in Innovation
Diversity is a relevant topic for all organisations. The world is becoming smaller while companies are getting bigger.
Various factors are contributing to the growth of diversity in organisations and communities. It’s easier to travel and relocate, companies are larger and span across different regions of the world, internet created an incredible opportunity to get in touch with the world and its amazing diversity.
This continuous exposition to diversity should make us more aware of our uniqueness.
Right now, most of the focus is on how to manage and exploit diversity inside organisations.
However, there is another interesting angle that is more subtle and so less explored; it is the relation between diversity and innovation.
We are all aware that the market for any innovative idea or product is global. Whether we create an online service or a new product our users, customers and consumers will be all different.
The developer programming a new AI software is aware of the diversity of the users that will use it?
Our own beliefs and values influence the output of our work. How much do we think of diversity when we design, create and develop something?
In her article, Linda Boff from General Electric discussed how the new Natural Language interfaces require us to think about diversity.
Most of the companies are trying to solve the problem making their development teams as more diverse as possible. Even if I believe that this is a great strategy I am not sure it is enough.
The more we expose ourselves to diversity the more we will understand that we are all unique. No team, however big, will be able to comprise all the potential uniqueness of this connected and diverse world.
We should also cultivate the value of diversity inside every person. If every person becomes aware of her uniqueness and learns how to relate with the uniqueness of others, you won’t need to create diversity in your team because diversity will be an inner value of anyone.