I want to draw a distinction right at the start between two kinds of diversity on the one hand.

Demographic diversity, which is the thing that we often think about when we think about this term.

On the other hand, there is cognitive diversity, which is about differences in perspectives and insight on the models and heuristics we deploy to make sense of the world around us and also perhaps, differences in thinking styles.

Some people are quite analytical thinkers and others mawr, holistic and contextual thinkers.

Imagine you're putting together a group off sprint relay runners and let's say the fastest four runners are all the same gender, the same race the same age.

They will have two Children watch the same TV programs, so they're not terribly diverse demographically, and probably not cognitively either.

And suppose somebody said to you, You know what?

If you could diversify that team, diversity really matters, and you then started selecting slower runners who were indeed diverse.

Would this help you in the Olympic gold medal?

No.

It would undermine your chances of winning Olympic gold medal in a sprint relay team.

You want tohave the fastest runners, and that's basically the only criterion of selection If you want to win the race.

And if you could take the fastest runner on hypothetically, clone that runner, let's call that person Usain Bolt.

So you now have a team of Usain Bolt's.

That's a fantastic team, a team of clones who are identical to each other because every member of your team is faster than any member of any other team that's gonna win the Olympic Games.

But now let's shift from a simple, linear tasks, like running to a complex tasks like economic forecasting.

Let me share briefly, a brilliant piece of research by a psychologist from Duke University called Jack Soul.

He took 258 economic forecasters, and he measured their track record.

He was trying to figure out who were the most accurate forecasters aunt.

He found that there was a distribution that was a bell shaped curve.

He also found that the most accurate forecaster was 5% more accurate than an average forecaster, but then solve took the top six forecasters and put them in what you might call a nominal team and he took the average of their forecasts.

But when Soul took the average off, the top six forecasters in the bed it with the with the most accurate forecaster, What do you think was more accurate?

I mean, I've given the game away here that the average of the top six.

But it wasn't just 1% more accurate or 5% more accurate or 10% more accurate.

It was 15% more accurate in the reason hinges on cognitive diversity.

Economic forecasters like the rest of us, they use a model in order to make a prediction, a way of thinking about the world.

Each of these models, if the Economist is worth their salt, contains some useful information.

But because economists use different models, the information contained in six moderately valid models must b'more information than any one model alone.

If you're thinking, each of these models probably also contains missed aches and myths and blind spots and errors, that is true.

But the technique of averaging eliminates the errors but pulls the information.

If that makes sense, this is a powerful thing, and it's a robust finding in social science, sometimes called the wisdom of the crowds.

But here's the interesting thing.

When it comes to tasks that we're more familiar with, like problem solving and coming up with creative ideas and strategies or new products and businesses, the power of cognitive diversity is even more profound.

Perhaps a good way to make the point conceptually is to imagine you're putting together a group of 10 people in the team to come up with creative ideas to do the next big thing in your business or organization.

Let's also assume that this is a talented group of people, each of whom comes up with 10 genuinely useful ideas.

But if they're cognitively homogeneous, if they think in the same way and they come up with the same 10 ideas, you only have 10% overall.

If, on the other hand, there cognitively diverse and come up with different ideas from one another, you could have 100 useful ideas.

Think about that for a second.

These air two teams composed of individuals who are equally talented but the cognitively diverse team comes up with almost 1000% additional creative ideas in the space off innovation which is going to dominate the future of our economy.

our political institutions and mawr engineering cognitive diversity relative to the context, you get this massive uplifting.

What I call collective intelligence on the tragedy is two things.

One a psychological point.

We are attracted unconsciously to people who think like us.

When people are mirroring our perspective back to us, it makes us feel smarter.

It validates our worldview.

When it's a simple task, that's fine.

Any one person has a solution.

You surround yourself with like minded others, you are able to deliver the solution.

But as the complexity increases and no one brain is sufficient to solve the problem when you're attracted to people who think in the same way you're getting no uplift it all in collective intelligence, and by mirroring each other's perspectives, you become more confident about a solution that might be gravely mistaken.

This is why cognitive diversity is so important and, I believe, will become the key feature of competitive advantage for the next 50 years.

But here's another thing.

It's not just a psychological problem.

It's a conceptual one.

I talked to one of the most eminent economic forecasters in the world, I said, Do you prefer working with people who think like you or who think differently.

And he said, If I truly believe that my model is the best one out there, then by definition I should be working with people who think like me.

That logic is extremely compelling.

It is also spectacularly wrong.