Two thousand five hundred years ago, the mysterious Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus proclaimed: “That which opposes produces a benefit.” Do you agree?

If you are a business leader or manager, chances are that you follow the opposite approach. Most companies cultivate sameness. “The ‘surplus society’ has a surplus of similar companies, employing similar people, with similar educational backgrounds, coming up with similar ideas, producing similar things, with similar prices and similar quality,” note the Swedish management gurus Kjell Nordström and Jonas Ridderstråle. But can you expect different results than your competitors if all you do is similar to what they do? Of course not. If you want to achieve different results, you need to be different in what you do. You need to be abnormal instead of being normal.

Here a necessary step to take is to make the culture of your organization more diverse. Diversity means to “recruit, select, develop and advance employees solely on merit, irrespective of age, gender, nationality, physical challenges, race, religious beliefs, sexual orientation or identity” (as the company BP defines the term). How can you make your organizational culture more diverse to boost creativity and innovation in your firm? Here are four tips for you to consider:

1. Make diversity a central pillar of your HR Strategy

“Where do good new ideas come from?” asks Nicholas Negroponte. “That’s simple! From differences. Creativity comes from unlikely juxtapositions. The best way to maximize differences is to mix ages, cultures and disciplines.” If you want to make your organization more innovative, make it more diverse. What does the truly diverse organization look like? Just think of Star Trek and the flight crew of the Starship Enterprise.

True diversity means creating a workforce that is truly multi-national, -ethnic, -racial, -religious, -cultural, -age-leveled and -disciplinary. Diversity means hiring not only Harvard MBAs but also anthropologists, designers, IT-freaks, artists, journalists, engineers, psychologists, sociologists, biologists, and so on.

In this connection, notice that the countries with thriving Creative Economies and Top Innovative Companies such as the USA, the UK or Canada encourage the outflow and inflow of knowledge workers and ‘the global creative nomads’ (a term coined by John Howard). They embrace diversity of people in order to increase diversity of thought, innovation, corporate growth and GDP growth. In contrast, countries with protectionist immigration policies breed monocultures and sameness of thought.

Lesson: Ensure that your workforce could stand as a model for a Benetton ad. Lobby your politicians to change the immigration and labor policies to attract and retain the best global talents in the age of value creation.

2. Innovation is a team sport

People differ in their fundamental thinking preferences in that they prefer to think about theories, ideas, people or systems — or have combinations of these four main thinking modes.

Different modes of thinking are needed at different stages of the X-IDEA Creative Process. Theorists and Ideators collaborate well together in the initial Xploration stage. Ideators and to a lesser extent People-oriented thinkers add the greatest value in the Ideation and Development stages. In the fourth stage Evaluation, all four basic thinking modes are needed to thoroughly evaluate your ideas and solutions. In the final Action stage, it’s the time for the system-thinkers to take center stage to prepare for and lead the idea activation effort. In addition, use the people-thinkers as master communicators to sell the benefits of your solutions to vital supporters (such as senior executives or external financiers).

Lesson: Innovation is a team sport. Staff innovation projects with a diverse team of people representing different modes of thinking that will shine at different stages of the creative process.

3. Collaborations thrive when opposites unite

In line with Heraclitus’ recommendation, consider pairing or combining people that are very different to work together on projects where you need some novel solutions.

For example, I have started a very successful research collaboration with Assistant Professor Brian Hunt, a colleague that has nearly exactly the opposite personality type according to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Brian is an introverted, dutiful, detail-oriented, and systematic ISTJ (also described as “The Inspector”), while I am an extraverted, visionary and highly flexible ENTP (“The Innovator”). Our collaboration works extremely well based on our understanding that each of us brings different talents, interests and conceptual and perceptual skills to the party. The results of this Yin-Yang team approach are academic research papers that offer refreshingly different and interesting new perspectives.

Lesson: Boost work results by teaming opposite characters for work projects that require fresh thinking and creativity as well as detail-orientation and pragmatism. As Malcolm Stevenson Forbes suggests: “Diversity: the art of thinking independently together.”

4. Hire people that make you feel uncomfortable

I noticed some time ago that in a particular industry or type of organization, a certain mode of thinking tends to dominate. Systems-oriented thinkers mostly control banks, with theorists and people persons working on the periphery. Ad agencies are full of Ideators and People-thinkers, while most universities represent the mirror image (theorists and system-thinkers). Consultancies typically recruit conceptual thinkers who love pondering on theories and ideas, whereas manufacturing units are full of operational thinkers who pragmatically take care of the systems and people involved.

In order to become different from other companies in your industry, recruit a fair number of employees that tick differently than the dominant modes. This goes in line with the recommendation of Stanford professor Bob Sutton, who advocates “hiring people that make you feel uncomfortable” as a remedy to make your firm more innovative.

Before I was recruited by the College of Management, Mahidol University four years ago, there was a controversial debate going on in the hiring committee. Some colleagues felt uncomfortable with my extravagant personality and the innovative creativity courses that I advocated to launch at the college. They rightfully noted that I did not smoothly fit into the prevailing mindset. Fortunately, the leader of the college had the courage to follow Sutton’s advice, and now the CMMU can offer the finest Business Creativity course in Asia to its master students.

Lesson: Spice up your organization by recruiting a number of people who think and act differently than the dominant majority.

Conclusion: “Diversity is not about how we differ. Diversity is about embracing one another’s uniqueness,” noted Ola Joseph. Increase the diversity of your organization to make it more innovative and truly unique.

© Dr. Detlef Reis 2008. This article was published in parallel in the Bangkok Post under the title “Less of the same is more for innovation” on 9 October 2008.