Diversity and Its Value

Diversity and Its Value

Emerson was one of the greatest thinkers on diversity. He did not merely encourage diversity or celebrate it; he also dared to openly mock those who were rigid in mind and bound by convention: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” When standing at a podium in an auditorium and looking out at a large audience, Emerson never saw a crowd. He saw a collection of individuals. In his view, what each person thinks, and the way each person thinks, is limited—and, more importantly, diverse. He believed that our experiences, emotions, and patterns of cognition limit our ability to see the world as a whole. Ideally, he hoped people could elevate their experience, broaden their horizons, and arrive at an understanding of their own. Emerson wrote:

Life is like a train of moods, each car a bead of feeling—joy, anger, sorrow, delight. And as we pass through them, they become a succession of many-colored lenses, each tinting the world in its own strange and vivid way, while each lens reveals no more than the tiny point within its focus. Stand on a mountain and look around, and what you see is still the mountain. We make vivid what we ourselves are able to do, and we can see only what has thus become vivid. Nature, no less than books, belongs only to the eyes that can see it. Whether a person can perceive the beauty of a sunset or a fine poem depends entirely on that person’s state of mind. Every day brings sunrise and sunset, and genius is born into the world at every moment. But only in those rare moments of calm and serenity can we appreciate the beauty of nature or judge the poetry of genius.

This passage is quoted from Emerson’s “Experience.” Emerson believed that our experience of the world shapes our view of it. That is certainly true. But what does that mean for the various differences we want to discuss? To answer that question, we first need a better understanding of those differences. In what follows, I will use “seeing the mountain” as an example, though here I will call the mountain a “rugged landscape,” using that term to refer to difficult problems. It is worth quoting Emerson again: “The difference between one landscape and another may be slight, but the difference in the beholders is great.” We call those beholders who can truly see the beauty of mountains and waters geniuses. Although some may question this definition of genius, and may even question how great Emerson’s contribution really was, it cannot be denied that he did see clearly what confuses and perplexes so many others. So it is fitting to begin from the foundation of his argument and move forward from there. And as we proceed, we should remind ourselves to follow his advice: it is no bad thing to slow our pace.

We slow down for a specific purpose: to clarify the potential benefits of diversity. Our goal is to understand when and how diversity produces value. We are trying to move beyond metaphor toward a deeper understanding. In the end, we do succeed, and in what follows we will present the formal results. We have shown that in problem-solving, diversity can outperform ability; and in prediction, diversity is just as important as ability. But before presenting these formal conclusions, we need to lay the groundwork. Consider, by analogy, the mathematical theorem that the area of a rectangle equals its length times its width. That result is meaningful only after “length” and “width” have been clearly defined.

Likewise, to show that diversity is beneficial, we must first define a series of terms and concepts: perspectives, heuristics, interpretations, and predictive models. Once these definitions are in place, we can bring together these formal ways of characterizing diversity into what we may call a diversity toolkit. This is also how we should think about people’s abilities: as the collection of tools they possess. Then, using this toolkit framework, we can explore whether, why, how, and when diversity in toolkits generates benefits.