Innovation Tips

…ideas to help foster collaborative genius

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Diversity—the Innovative Difference

The life and death of industries and organizations reflects the struggle for new life observed in biological evolution. The survival and adaptation of organizations, like the survival and adaptation of species, depends largely on diversity.

The evolution of a species is dependent on multiple choices, a diverse pool of alternative adaptations, that may help a species respond more effectively to a changing environment. The more choices, the greater the probability of successful adaptation. Species seem to change by generating ongoing diversity, a stream of diverse choices for adapting more successfully. There is structure there, but not control. The diversity is accessible and seems to respond to an unseen order, but not to the control of the organism or the species. Similarly, organizations with highly diverse cultures, that are fluidly generating multiple responses to a changing environment, also have a greater chance to successfully adapt, to innovate and enhance their ongoing success.

The whole idea of diversity within organizations often goes against the grain of conventional organizational culture. Diversity is traditionally not cultivated in organizations. In fact, it is often implicitly discouraged. If a person doesn’t “fit,” they are usually expelled, one way or another, from a rigidly homogeneous organization.

Also, the traditional “command and control” approaches to organizational structure often inhibit the ongoing diversity essential to responding to a changing environment. No wonder so many large corporations today seem to be scrambling to find ways to function as smaller and more flexible entrepreneurial teams.

Generating diversity is a new concept for many, but it has been the seasoned approach to innovation for life itself. We could all do well to pay attention to that ancient and persistently successful way of responding to change.

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