The positive impacts of diversity have been discussed in many areas such as innovation management – I’ve also touched the topic more than once. However, most evidence for this has been anecdotal or based on experience. The Difference: how the power of diversity creates better groups, firms, schools, and societies by Scott E. Page takes on a different approach – the diversity it talks about is cognitive diversity and the book ultimately offers proof based on models and mathematics that diversity indeed trumps ability.
As it’s one thing to say diversity is good and quite another to prove it, it’s a strong statement but The Difference also makes a strong case for it. If and when someone you know doubts that (cognitive) diversity brings benefits, this is the kind of book you can hit them on the head with it and win any such conversation. Of course there are some caveats, boundary conditions which must apply for diversity to produce benefits.
The models and covering them with plenty of examples take up most of the book. Many of the example cases are very simple – at times I felt they were too simple, but they did manage to drive the point home, so they served their purpose adequately. Nevertheless, they did take some time to think through so I will spare you from the proof-part.
There are many lessons to learn from the book and it provides numerous smaller but still significant insights. The most important practical conclusions, however, can in my opinion be condensed into the following:
- Make sure the problem at hand is one that benefits from diversity; in particular difficult problems or prediction. Tasks truly focusing on individual effort – like selling merchandise – will obviously not benefit from a diverse group.
- Broaden your horizon – but not too much. That is to say you shouldn’t throw diverse people at the problem indiscriminately; a poet will likely not be much help in figuring out a new drug candidate.
- Remember what diversity matters – cognitive diversity. Most of the time when people talk of diversity, they mean ethnic diversity. However, merely ethnically diverse people may not be cognitively diverse.
- Don’t forget intelligence or ability (however one defines those), just don’t focus on them solely. Don’t try to find the most capable person (this might in fact even be detrimental) but also understand that people with very limited abilities will not contribute much even if they bring diversity.
- Manage the diversity. Why? Page puts this well:
.. even in those cases where diversity should produce benefits, it will do so only if managed well. Lots of strange things can happen in a diverse group that would not be likely to happen among homogeneous people – including physical and verbal violence.
- Don’t expect too much – it’s clearly noted that while diversity has indisputable benefits. However, the benefits are not huge. Don’t expect diversity to magically solve all your problems, but you can expect it to bring an improvement.
- Believe. It turns out that belief in that diversity brings benefits may be a necessary precondition for it actually bringing those benefits.
Of course this list leaves out a lot of fascinating details on topics like ketchup. You’ll get to those if you read the book. The one major complaint I have of the book is that it gleefully (admittedly, also explicitly and knowingly) glosses over how one deals with many of the problems stemming from diversity. Sure, covering this comprehensively is impossible – because we don’t have all the answers. Still, it would’ve been nice to see some more pointers to that topic.
All in all, The Difference is not a book I would recommend without qualification. It can feel tedious at times, and at times you might be left wondering whether the models really end up proving useful. In the end they (mostly) do, but even an analytical mind such as myself may find the last chapters relating real-world empirical evidence and practical guidance the most fascinating. All in all a very good book, but I certainly don’t need to read this type of a book again. But then again, I was convinced of the benefits of diversity already before – if you are not or are still looking for proof, reading The Difference will be very useful.
This photo from January represents one thing that’s wrong with the Finnish winters – there are no good-quality fresh fruits or vegetables available. What little there is is either tasteless greenhouse-grown or raw shipped-from-somewhere. In January we also started going to baby swimming lessons with Amanda; in this issue she obviously comes to her father in that she absolutely loves water!
February was unseasonably warm, up to +8C, and seaside walks felt more like October than February. Nothing much out of the ordinary happened in February otherwise; at work we managed to cut costs dramatically and dined well at Mai Thai – the 230eur bill there was a rather big decrease from the 1,200eur spent by the same team the previous time..
Despite the warmer-than-before temperatures, March is still firmly in the winter territory; hence, all flowery photographic activity needs to take place indoors, such as on this tiny rosebud. At the end of March, we got snow on two occasions that actually stayed on the ground for a while – but that didn’t stop us from looting the 
Some small signs of the coming spring were already visible in April, such as this beautiful blue flower in the gardens nearby. A quick trip or two to Germany seems to be mandatory every spring; this time Düsseldorf failed to impress, but didn’t disappoint either.
The Japanese garden and the cherry tree bloom is always one of the high points of May; May 2008 began in downright summery temperatures of over +20C, which we thankfully didn’t know would be pretty much the best “heatwave” we’d get the whole year. BBQ season was also officially opened in May – this year we also used the disposable BBQs successfully in parks etc, without even setting off any fires.
With June came a quick business trip to a new (for me) country, Monaco, as well as an event that has become more rare for me lately: an exam. I think IELTS must be somehow fundamentally flawed as I didn’t get a perfect score on it for some strange reason 
June is also when the Helsinki Samba Carnival takes place, a day when the downtown views could easily be from another country.. I like the summer in Helsinki a lot actually, there’s always something cool happening and the swarms of tourists create a nice international atmosphere that is mostly missing other times of the year.
July, the official summer month, was not very reliably summer this year – which was just as well as I spent most of the month working, with one week getting used to the pattern what would define the month of August:
August was a unique month in that Sarita went to work whereas I took the month off as paternal leave and stayed home with 11-month-old Amanda. We had a lot of fun and I made lots of interesting observations. Among these were: 
September began with the best business trip ever, a three-city tour of Hong Kong, Auckland and Sydney with plenty of time for my own activities. Excellent company at Auckland made the conference + sightseeing & shopping even more fun than I imagined it would be and afterwards a few days off at Sydney would’ve been downright perfect had it not been for the storm that kept the beaches closed and thus me out of the water and off my surfboard. 
October provided another good business trip, this time to Bordeaux where it still was summer. My first time at the 
Late November saw a foot of snow falling on Helsinki within one day, and amidst the ensuing traffic chaos people quickly forgot the jeer typically directed at Americans when similar chaos ensues there after a foot or two of snow. Finns are so proud of the country’s winter capabilities that we easily forget what actually happens if a foot of snow is dumped on us within 24 hours. You see in Finland, typically whatever snow falls does so over weeks and months, making it quite a bit easier to clear away. Unfortunately the entire 40cm of snow was gone within a week and has yet to return.
With our stream/river still running wild in December, it seems possible that we won’t be getting a cold winter at all. Again. On the other hand, the forecast does call for -15C weather in just a few days time, so let’s see. Some snow would be nice to help the darkness a bit, but on the other hand my skin doesn’t like freezing temperatures at all, so in that respect warm winters are more than welcome. 
