3.3 Diversity and innovation

There is a significant body of evidence to support the fact that diverse teams are more innovative. Watch this short video from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which explains how their workforce has changed and the benefits that inclusion brings.

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Transcript: Video 7: Inclusion Drives Innovation at JPL

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[TEXT ON SCREEN]: When I started my JPL career in 1980, I was the only female engineer in a section of about 150 engineers. Fortunately, the group supervisor who hired me was very attuned to diversity, and made a strong effort in his hiring practices to make his group more diverse and inclusive.

MOOGEGA COOPER

I’ve seen and continue to see historic photos of JPL and the people that worked here in the beginning. Having an imperfect past is fine. But really trying to build a better future is what warms my heart.

LINDA SPILKER

There’s been a tremendous change over the 45 years I’ve been at JPL. I first started at JPL in the late 1970s as part of the Voyager team. And there weren’t very many women. But over the years, I’ve seen that really change. And now there are many more women in roles across the project, including upper leadership roles.

ROSALY LOPES

Young women have really embraced the wonders of science, also in general, space exploration.

FARAH ALIBAY

I think one of the things that I really enjoy about JPL is that even as a young engineer, I was always given a seat at the table and listened to.

MOHAMED ABID

Any given mission, you find people that are from different countries. I’m originally from Tunisia, and I work here.

ROSALY LOPES

We find people from all over the world here. And that diversity has been great because I didn’t feel that as an immigrant, I was something different. There were lots of people like me.

MOOGEGA COOPER

Inclusion is so important to the success of JPL because we need to attract the right people to tackle the issues that we have at hand to be able to send all of these complex robotics to other planets and moons.

FARAH ALIBAY

We land rovers on Mars and fly helicopters. These are not easy things and not things that are written in textbooks. We have to keep pushing the envelope. And we are only going to be able to do that if we have teams that work well together, that feel accepted together, but that can also look at a problem and come at it a different way with a whole different set of experience and bring that to the table.

MOOGEGA COOPER

It takes small microaggressions, small gestures for someone to feel othered, for someone to feel not included or part of the culture and part of the group. And when you don’t feel part of the group, it’s hard to collaborate.

MOHAMED ABID

So it’s a team work. It’s a team effort. All of those led me to see this is where I want to be. I’ve been here about 17 years. I really cherished and enjoyed every moment of it.

LINDA SPILKER

It’s very refreshing and encouraging to see that change not only to have more women, but have greater diversity here at JPL.

MOOGEGA COOPER

JPL provides a supportive and nurturing environment all the way from the top. They have these two new classes, for example, were released on reducing bias and understanding gender differences at JPL. And by the end of 2020, 86% of managers took one of those two courses, which is amazing. Culture and changes start from the top, and that’s what JPL is committed to.

FARAH ALIBAY

I found that people have accepted me for who I am. I mean, I’m not exactly your typical engineer. And I felt comfortable dyeing my hair again once I started working here and being my loud self.

LINDA SPILKER

During that time, I had my daughters and other children were born to Voyager moms. And then working on Cassini, I can bring my grandchildren to see JPL. It’s really been a multigenerational journey of exploration.

ROSALY LOPES

I consider myself very lucky to have ended up at JPL and to have been here for so many years. It really nurtured me. It offered me tremendous opportunities that I don’t think I would have had anywhere else.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

End transcript: Video 7: Inclusion Drives Innovation at JPL

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Video 7: Inclusion Drives Innovation at JPL

In a recent career column in the scientific journal Nature, social scientist Katrin Prager (2021) describes how working with a team of individuals from a variety of demographic and disciplinary backgrounds ‘prompted us to look for insights in places that a less-diverse team would not even have considered.’

The author also goes on to highlight an issue that can impair this diversity when we are choosing who to work with on particular problems, and that is homophily, or ‘love of the same’.

You might have heard the proverb ‘birds of a feather flock together’. It basically means ‘people of similar interests, background, ideas or characteristics will often congregate or hang out with each other, people who have similar ideas or values tend to stick together’ (Grammarist, no date).

This can impair innovation, as similar people will have overlapping experience and knowledge and won’t challenge each other in the same way.

Over time, even a diverse organisation can become increasingly homogenised and fall into something known as ‘groupthink’, which reduces our ability to explore different solutions and identify our blind spots, preventing organisations from leveraging the power of their diversity. You’ll explore ‘groupthink’ in more detail in Week 8.

The advantages of friction

Being inclusive has numerous benefits but it is not always the most comfortable journey. Differences in ideas and perceptions can cause conflicts that many of us would prefer to avoid. It is important though to learn to be comfortable with the uncomfortable. You’ll explore conflict in more detail in Week 4.

Cross (2022) describes several reasons why we need friction in the workplace to build a culture of innovation:

• Friction is where we have to unpack and explore our ideas more deeply, so we can better explain them to others.
• Friction is where ideas, perspectives and assumptions are tested.
• Friction is where we can create a culture in which everybody feels safe to constructively disagree.
• Friction is where we grow through exposure to new ways of thinking.

In her article in Nature, Prager (2021) also goes on to describe the cognitive challenge involved in collaborating within diverse teams as members must often overcome differences in vocabulary, knowledge and understanding. She gives an example from her own experience of working with a researcher from Brazil and gradually realising they both had a very different understanding of the word ‘community’, but also describes the benefits of combining their understanding to bring greater insight.

For organisational leaders, another positive aspect of diversity is its potential impact on profitability.