The Diversity Bonus, Scott E. Page
The Diversity Bonus, Scott E. Page
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The Diversity Bonus
How Great Teams Pay Off in the Knowledge Economy

Author: Scott E. Page

Narrator: L.J. Ganser

Unabridged: 9 hr 54 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 09/19/2017


Synopsis

How businesses and other organizations can improve their performance by tapping the power of differences in how people think What if workforce diversity is more than simply the right thing to do in order to make society more integrated and just? What if diversity can also improve the bottom line of businesses and other organizations facing complex challenges in the knowledge economy? It can. And The Diversity Bonus shows how and why. Scott Page, a leading thinker, writer, and speaker whose ideas and advice are sought after by corporations, nonprofits, universities, and governments around the world, makes a clear and compellingly pragmatic case for diversity and inclusion. He presents overwhelming evidence that teams that include different kinds of thinkers outperform homogenous groups on complex tasks, producing what he calls "diversity bonuses." These bonuses include improved problem solving, increased innovation, and more accurate predictions--all of which lead to better performance and results. Page shows that various types of cognitive diversity--differences in how people perceive, encode, analyze, and organize the same information and experiences--are linked to better outcomes. He then describes how these cognitive differences are influenced by other kinds of diversity, including racial and gender differences--in other words, identity diversity. Identity diversity, therefore, can also produce bonuses. Drawing on research in economics, psychology, computer science, and many other fields, The Diversity Bonus also tells the stories of people and organizations that have tapped the power of diversity to solve complex problems. And the book includes a challenging response from Katherine Phillips of the Columbia Business School. The result changes the way we think about diversity in the workplace--and far beyond it. Author bio: Scott E. Page is the Leonid Hurwicz Collegiate Professor of Complex Systems, Political Science, and Economics at the University of Michigan and an external faculty member of the Santa Fe Institute. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is the author of The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies and Diversity and Complexity (both Princeton). He has been a featured speaker at Davos as well as at organizations such as Google, Bloomberg, BlackRock, Boeing, and NASA.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jerrod on March 11, 2019

Thesis: (cognitive) diversity leads to increased team productivity when the task is complex and the skills involved can be attained in a non-linear direction. This book is ok for what it is. If you understand the wisdom of crowds, comparative advantage, and issues of sample selection, the theory rea......more

Goodreads review by Amir Hossein on April 15, 2018

This book provides a rather scientific angle supported by complexity theory for seeing the benefits of diversity in teamwork. Contains many good examples.......more

Goodreads review by Darren on October 05, 2017

This is an interesting book, advocating the creation of great, diverse teams that can yield great results in the modern-day knowledge economy. Diversity, in this context, is a lot more than ensuring a mix of ethnicities and cultures and treating everybody equal. That should be a given. The author bel......more

Goodreads review by Emma on March 31, 2022

Did you know that companies who hire diverse teams are on average 19% more profitable than those who don't? The Diversity Bonus by Scott E. Page is a must-read for business professionals everywhere. The phrase "great minds think alike" is proven false time and time again in the examples presented in......more

Goodreads review by Sandeep on October 08, 2022

This is a timely and grounded dissertation on the value of diversity in any institution. The simple thesis of the book is this: A team made of diverse identities will do better than individuals or a homogeneous team at solving complex problems owing to their wider cognitive repertoire gained through......more