Cultural Evolutionary Behavioural Science
The term “paradox of diversity” was coined by Michael to describe the double-edge sword that is diversity: a diverse work environment fosters innovation but if poorly designed can create divisions hindering collaboration.
The post on the Collective Brain approach to innovation available here should have made clear that successful innovation is the product of the environment and not that of individual genius. Among the three malleable environmental factors affecting innovation called levers of innovation (size and interconnectedness of the group, transmission fidelity and cultural trait diversity), diversity offers the most upward, but also the most downward, potential.
Culturalytik’s nuanced approach to diversity helps to mitigate this potential, carefully designing the optimal bespoke diverse environment for your company enabling it to reap the maximum benefits with minimal cost. First, it measures deep diversity: focusing on cultural traits such as values and beliefs predicting behaviour rather than superficial diversity. Then, it designs the optimal division of labour, with enough group specialization allowing for deeper expertise, while making sure this doesn’t create polarization and isolation of that said expertise. One of the practical ways Culturalytik uses to arrange for intersection of all the expertises is the careful selection and placement of “bridge individuals”.
Michael’s paper introducing the Paradox of Diversity in more details is available here, as well as a simplified explanation of the paper available here.