Diversity Is Not Enough: Collective Intelligence Requires Diversity and Disagreement
In this episode, Jack Rausch and Temple’s Ravi Kudesia “explore a concept revered by many and challenged by few in higher education—the value of diversity. We look beyond the surface of this belief, and consider how different kinds of diversity impact team building, decision making, and collective intelligence.”
In the lead-up to SFFA vs. Harvard, this discussion opens up questions around 40 years of precedent grounded in the value of diversity. When it comes to a University’s mission, such as “truth” or “the search for truth,” the role of diversity in fulfilling the mission is vital to understand.
As meta-analyses have showed, “It’s not diversity in surface-level demographic characteristics of team members that enhances collective intelligence. It’s deep-level diversity, where team members differ in their viewpoints and information,” Kudesia explains in his corresponding blog post. His own study asks and answers: “How can we ensure that teams use their diverse information to make more-intelligent collective decisions?”
The study finds that: 1) Deep-level diversity matters 2) Agreement erodes intelligence, 3) Speed trades off with accuracy, and 4) Disagreement optimally balances off these trade-offs.
“The most efficient and scalable approach for information-intensive decisions is to leverage the wisdom of disagreement. It is by challenging the assumptions and opinions of our team members that we produce collective intelligence, a scarce but sorely needed quality for today’s teams.”
Ravi Kudesia is Assistant Professor at the Fox School of Business at Temple University. He teaches courses on Power, Influence, and Negotiation, has won numerous teaching awards, and has appeared in The Financial Times, New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, CNN, and a number of other outlets.
