NCWIT and Diversity for Innovation

This week I am at the NCWIT summit. Yesterday's talks included two academics with very valuable research on Gender and Innovation - Scott Page and Joshua Aronson.

Scott Page is a researcher at the University of Michigan whose research is on the importance of diversity to innovation. His point is that for very large problems, such as poverty, climate change, energy, health care, global finance, and education, solutions found by a diverse team will outperform teams with the best agents involved. In his talk he discussed an experiment including a 100 agents. The experiment ranked the performance of all of the agents. The experiment then put together two groups - Group 1 included the best 20 agents (Alpha Group), and Group 2 included 20 random agents (Diverse Team). The diverse team almost always outperformed the alpha team. TO me this is a fascinating result. The key is that the alpha group tended to include 20 people who use the same tools, such as heuristic problem solving approaches.

What must be true for this results?
Hard Problem Condition: the problem itself must be difficult
Calculus Condition: problem solvers must all be smart- -we must be able to list their local
optima
Diversity Condition: Problem solvers must have diverse heuristics and perspectives

His research is really important for all of us that regularly articulate the need for diverse teams.

Joshua Aronson is an associate professor in Applied Psychology at NYU and his work is in stereotype threat. According to Joshua “Human intelligence is more fragile and malleable than most people think – far more so than the makers of the SAT and other tets would have us believe”.

As one example (and there are many) of stereotype threat, if the SAT test, when offered, asks for the gender at the beginning of the test, as opposed to the end, there is a measurable difference in SAT scores for women.

What makes intelligence fragile is the social factors that impair intelligent thought

• Interpersonal chemistry – feel smarter, funner etc. with certain people. During my early career years, the support of several early professors made my abiltiy to deliver results easy. On the other hand, one of my earliest profeessors was sharply critical, and there were times when my brain would go blank, and I would be uanble to move forward.

• Threatened Safety – within two weeks of a homicide, the neighborhoods IQ takes a nosedive. I have watched intelligent members of my extended network become immobilized intellectually as they experienced challenging problems at home.

• Threatened Belongingness – nature wired us to care about what other people think. In our work at ABI, all of our community makes decisions based on what other people think. In some cases this desire for approval can bring new people into our community, but it can also mkae smart people ineffective.
  

Great speakers, and a great day.