Andrew G Haldane: The Sneetches
Speech by Mr Andrew G Haldane, Executive Director and Chief Economist of the Bank of
England, at the Scottish Business Friends dinner in aid of BBC Children in Need, Edinburgh,
12 May 2016.
* * *
Accompanying charts can be found at the end of the speech.
I would like to thank Kiran Bance, Venetia Bell, Stephen Brown, Gurmaj Dhillon, Will Dowson, Jeremy Franklin,
Richard Galletly, Cat Hines, Charlotte Hogg, Tom Mann, Matthew Manning, Alex Mitchell, Ben Nelson, Raakhi
Odedra, Charlotte Pope-Williams, Alice Pugh, Amandeep Rehlon, May Rostom, Emma Sinclair, Anne Wetherilt and
Richard Wyatt for their comments and contributions. I would also like to thank Professors Philip Bond and Heidi
Johansen-Berg and Alan Milburn and Emma Hardaker-Jones for their insights.
In 1953, Dr Seuss published The Sneetches.1 It tells the tale of an imaginary creature of which
there are two types: those with and those without stars on their bellies (Figure 1). Star-bellied
Sneetches are perceived in Sneetch society to be superior to those without. Until, that is, those
without discover a machine for adding stars to their bellies. At that point the original star-bellied
Sneetches, no longer distinctive, begin removing their stars to regain their special status. And
so it goes on in a merry-go-round, until the Sneetches collectively realise they are better off
treating equally those with and those without.
The Sneetches is a parody of status and discrimination. It has been enjoyed by generations of
children, so it has a particular resonance at tonight's event supporting Children in Need. And
it has a happy (diverse, multi-cultural) ending. But The Sneetches also shines an
uncomfortable spotlight on a psychological flaw in us all - the desire to differentiate, to
stereotype. A half-century on, this flaw is one with which society continues to wrestle, not least
in a world where the co-mingling of cultures, races and creeds has never been greater. In
practice, this co-mingling has not always had such a happy ending.
Tonight, I want to discuss some of the issues around diversity. These are relevant to groups
large and small, from communities and organisations to economies and nation states. These
issues affect all of us, children and adults, whether at school, work or play. In keeping with the
spirit, I want to discuss diversity by drawing on a diverse a set of disciplines to explore the
lessons they hold. And I will conclude with suggestions for some new directions in promoting
diversity, in particular in organisations such as the Bank of England.
We are all sneetches
Let me start with what might appear, on the face of it, a rather controversial statement.
Everyone is this room is a star-bellied Sneetch. I am, all of you are and everyone outside this
room is too. By that I mean we all discriminate, to a certain degree and in certain situations,
based on the characteristics and creeds of the individuals we encounter. Sometimes these
biases are extreme, at other times subtle. Sometimes they are conscious, at other times
unconscious. But all of our minds are biased.
Looked at through an evolutionary lens, this is not as controversial as it may appear. Let me
explain why. Humans are sentient, water-filled whoopee cushions moulded over millions of
years of evolutionary experience. For the vast majority of that period, they operated in
huntergatherer communities of less than 100 people. Evolutionary biologists believe that behaviours
learned, and neurological pathways cleared, during that period may have had a lasting impact
on our brains and bodies.2 The neurological and physiological traces of our ancient past are
still very much visible and audible today.
The hunter-gatherer bands of primitive man occupied a hostile environment. Groups of that
size were acutely vulnerable to events that could threaten their extinction. Chief among these
existential threats was conflict and disease. And the most likely sources of conflict and disease
were not found within communities but outside of them - from dangerous strangers, bearing
ill-will or ill-ness.3 Evolutionary biologists believe this existential risk from conflict and disease
installed a deep-seated "fear of strangers". It embedded stranger-danger.
Strangers, for this purpose, could be anyone with characteristics different than those of the
"ingroup". In fragile hunter-gatherer communities, this mind-set made sense. It was a rational,
risk-averse response to existential threat. "Do not trust strangers" was a learned evolutionary
heuristic, a simple and robust decision-making rule to guard against the threat of extinction.
Paranoia in primitive man was rational - everyone really was out to get you.
Psychologists call this ecological rationality.4 Fear of strangers was a rational response to the
ecology of the time. This behavioural trait is shared by other primates, such as apes.5 What is
interesting is that these primordial fears may have persisted long after the ecology itself has
changed. To give a trivial example, fear of snakes, spiders and dense rainforests probably
arose on the grasslands of Africa in 50,000 BC. It was an ecologically rational response then.
Whether it is an ecologically rational response on the high streets of Edinburgh and London
today is altogether more questionable.
What is true about fear of snakes and spiders is true, too, about fear of strangers. The
evolutionary heuristic - "do not trust a stranger" - remains alive and well today. And in some
situations, it remains a useful guide. Among parents, it is a simple but still powerful
decisionmaking rule for children. As Benjamin Franklin put it: "Distrust and caution are the parents of
security". At the same time, this neurological relic from the ancient past may be seriously out
of kilter with the workings of a modern, multi-cultural society.
Given its neurological roots, it should perhaps come as no surprise that history is pock-marked
with instances of overt and enduring fear of strangers, whether that "strangeness" derives from
differences in race, gender, culture, religion, political ideology, socio-economic status or age.
The notion of the evil stranger is steeped in ancient folklore and political discourse.
Historically, fear of strangers has plainly not been the only reason for discrimination and
oppression.
Self-interest, and the pursuit of power or command over scarce resources, has also had a
huge influence throughout history. From Ancient Egypt, where colour prejudice was thought to
depend on which ethnic group held sway, to the slave trade to apartheid, unpalatable historical
examples of power-based discrimination are depressingly legion.6
Even if such biases have been ever-present through human history, their precise form appears
to have changed over time as societies themselves have evolved. Tectonic shifts in flows of
people, and in laws and social norms, have brought about a significant reshaping of biases
over the course of the past few centuries.
One important shaping factor here is likely to have been migratory patterns.
Cross-border flows of people have occurred throughout human history: at times an involuntary
response to poverty or persecution, at others a voluntary response to opportunity and
prosperity. The scale of these flows has waxed and waned, but it is clear cross-border flows
of people today are at high levels historically.7 In London, the fraction of non-UK born residents
was almost 3 million or 37% of the population in 2011. And Edinburgh has the largest non-UK
born population of any region in Scotland at 16%.
Accompanying this co-mingling of ethnicities and cultures has been an evolution, bordering on
revolution, in social attitudes. Through the course of several centuries, laws have emerged
forbidding discrimination based on race, gender, disability, ethnicity and age. And, during the
latter part of the 20th century, there has been rapid growth in a new set of social norms and
policies to promote diversity in schools and universities, in the workplace, in sport and leisure
activities and in wider society.
One interesting window on these changing societal attitudes is provided by looking at the
etymological roots and evolution of the word "diversity" itself. These can be traced to the Latin
"divertere" meaning "to turn aside" - which in turn led to our word 'divert', meaning to change
course - and the old French expression "diversite" meaning "difference, uniqueness, oddness".
In other words, the semantic roots of diversity support a dual interpretation, part positive, part
negative.8
That dual interpretation has continued through the ages. Chart 1 plots the incidence of the
word diversity in books printed since the 15th Century.9 Diversity entered the English lexicon in
the mid-14th century. At that time, its meaning was broadly neutral. From the late 15th Century
onwards, however, the term appears to have taken on negative connotations: "being contrary
to what is agreeable or right; perversity; evil".
During the 18th Century, its fortunes changed again. At least some modern democracies began
to view diversity as a virtue, a safeguard against any one faction exerting too much power. And
from the middle of the 20th century, there has been a surge in the use of the word diversity, as
laws and social norms have adapted actively to embrace it.
Secular trends - demographic, legal, social - appear, then, to have reshaped the meaning of
diversity. Overt discrimination has become unacceptable, legally and socially. Yet while
reshaping biases, this changing societal landscape seems unlikely to have eliminated it
entirely. Indeed, it is possible that societal shifts may have nurtured a different, more elusive,
form of behavioural bias. Like its evolutionary forebears, this is to some extent rational, given
the social ecology of the time.
During the 20th century, psychologists began documenting work on social interaction in
communities of people with differing characteristics. In the 1970s, Henri Tajfel and colleagues
discovered that this behaviour often exhibited a strong "in-group" bias. People quickly adopted
a social, as well as an individual, identity having attached to a group. For that reason, this has
since become known as "social identity theory".10
Several important behavioural consequences flow from this theory. Groups become an
important source of pride and self-esteem for the individuals attached to them. To enhance
their own self-image, members of the group often then systematically exaggerate differences
with other groups, while emphasizing similarities within their own.11 Perhaps most important of
all, people may discriminate or negatively stereotype the "out-group", as a means of enhancing
the image of the "in-group" and hence their own self-image.
Behaviour consistent with social identity theory has since been detected in a wide range of
social settings: in families, sports teams, schools, gangs, colleges and organisations. It
generates important, but often subtle, biases in decision-making which may discriminate
against members of the out-group. Despite laws against racial discrimination in most
developed countries, there is evidence that racial stereotyping and discrimination in everyday
decision-making has persisted, in everything from selling cars to making loans.12
While deeply undesirable, these behaviours cannot be dismissed as entirely irrational. Indeed,
economists and psychologists have developed models to show this behaviour may indeed be
rational once the role of social identity and social norms are recognised.13 And because a
multicultural society gives rise to greater numbers of distinct groups and identities, this
sociallydiscriminatory behaviour might even have become more, not less, powerful over time.
These biases in behaviour are similar in spirit, but different in form, to those of primitive man.
Both generate negative sentiment towards strangers or the "out-group". In ancient times,
biases were based on the physical identity of strangers; they were overt and visible. Today,
many biases are based on the social identity of strangers; they are often covert and subtle.
Where primitive man had conscious biases, modern man often has unconscious ones too.14
That these biases are sometimes covert, rather than overt, does not diminish their importance
for society. Unconscious biases are likely to be just as prevalent, and sometimes as pernicious,
as conscious one. And precisely because they are harder to detect, sometimes even among
those exhibiting these behaviours, unconscious biases are more likely to go unnoticed, and
thus unchallenged, than conscious ones. As conscious biases were violent and visible,
unconscious biases are silent and invisible.
The Sneetches is, at one level, a children's story with a moral message. At another, it is a case
study in social identity theory, a parable for modern times. Even in advanced economies with
little fear of conflict or infection, with laws against discrimination and with social norms
favouring diversity, we all remain Sneetches. Our biased minds are in part a neurological
hangover from our hunter-gatherer past and in part a sociological side-effect of our
multicultural present. Either way, these biases are embedded in our brains and behaviours.
Diversity as a social good
Saying that behavioural biases among individuals are understandable is one thing. Saying
these biases are acceptable, when viewed from the perspective of society as a whole, is quite
another. There are at least two reasons why our biased minds may carry a significant societal
cost.
First, fear of strangers is in part a neurological relic of the past, a time of hunter-gather
communities, a different ecology. Our biased minds may, in a sense, still be adapting to a
multi-cultural environment. In this respect, discrimination is the neurological equivalent of the
appendix: essential at the time man ate grass on the savannahs, but today a
sometimesdangerous physiological fossil. Fear of strangers today may be a sometimes-dangerous
neurological fossil.
Second, there are many instances where the collective consequence of individually rational
decisions gives rise to sub-optimal outcomes for society. It is perfectly rational for everyone to
head to the exits if the fire alarm sounds in the theatre. But the collective consequences of
such actions are potentially catastrophic. Economists call this an externality problem. And
diversity (discrimination) can be seen as just such a positive (negative) social externality, a
public good (bad).
This is not a new orthodoxy. Writing back in 1848, John Stuart Mill captured well the societal
benefits of diversity:15
"It is hardly possible to overrate the value, in the present low state of human
improvement, of placing human beings in contact with persons dissimilar to
themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are
familiar...Such communication has always been, and is peculiarly in the present
age, one of the primary sources of progress"
More recently, Scott Page (2011) has encapsulated the positive social externality of diversity
more formally. Economists love an equation, so here is one:
Collective Ability = Individual Ability + Diversity
Recent evidence, drawn from a range of disciplines and settings, has tended to confirm Mill
and Page's conjectures. Diversity generates a positive social externality, helping the collective
far exceed the sum of its individual parts. Diversity is synergy. This has been found at almost
every scale of social grouping, from small communities and organisations, to large economies
and nation states. The benefits have been found, too, in non-social settings, such as ecological
and logistical systems.16
One channel through which diversity may improve societal outcomes is by fostering innovation
and creativity. If different raw ingredients are added to the intellectual melting pot, the final dish
is likely to be richer and more innovative.17 Psychologists believe that divergent thinking is the
cradle of creativity. That is why creativity is often found to be greatest among very young
children whose thinking is unconstrained by convention. Their brains have license to diverge
and roam free.18
Education and adulthood put a stop to that. They constrain cognitive freedom. But there are
means of freeing our brains from these constraints. For example, convening diverse groups
can be seen as a means of adults rediscovering the creativity of childhood. It is a synthetic
way of manufacturing divergent thinking, a sociological recipe for artificial intelligence that does
not require a robot or a PhD in physics. As childhood individualizes the creativity process,
diversity can collectivise that process.
At a micro level, there is fairly strong evidence for such an effect in communities, organisations
and cities. In early societies, there is evidence of brides being given to other tribes and
introducing new ideas and technologies.19 Inter-group marriage was, in effect, a vehicle for
technology transfer. And, later, waves of migrant-merchants are believed to have served as a
major stimulus to technology-transfer across civilised communities - for example, from the
ancient Orient to ancient Greece.20
Coming closer to today, within organisations there is widespread evidence of diverse
leadership teams improving firm-level performance.21 There is also evidence of diverse
workforces improving firm-level productivity, at least under certain conditions.22 Within cities,
there is evidence from the US and Europe of diverse, multicultural cities being a spur to
economic development and growth.23 Richard Florida argues that what defines a thriving city
these days is the three "t"s - talent, technology and tolerance - with the third a key enabler of
the first two.24
At the macro level, the evidence is more mixed but in general suggests a positive relationship
between diversity and economic growth. The historical experience of creatively-fertile empires,
cities or epochs - from ancient Greece to Medieval Florence, from Elizabethan London to
postrevolutionary Paris - is suggestive. Each of these social systems was notable for its
cosmopolitan culture, with a rich mix of religions, ideas and disciplines. Conversely, the cultural
isolation of China for several centuries is held by some scholars to be responsible for its
extended period of stifled innovation and growth.25
More recent empirical evidence, looking across a range of countries, has added empirical
support to this historical experience. Among advanced economies, measures of (genetic and
birthplace) diversity have been found to support economic growth and development under the
right conditions.26 And the effects can be large: increasing the diversity of skilled immigrants
by 1 percentage point raises long-run output by around 2%.27 On this evidence, diversity of
peoples has been an important ingredient behind organisations, cities and economies growing
over time.
A second dimension along which diversity may matter is in supporting the resilience of social
systems in the face of uncertainties and shocks, be it organisations or nation states. Courtesy
of behavioural economics, we now know that individuals suffer from a heady cocktail of
behavioural biases.28 Two of the more important are hubris bias (an exaggerated individual
sense of ability) and conformity bias (a tendency to act in line with consensus).29 The first
leaves decisions vulnerable to the whims of an over-confident individual, while the second
generates insufficient challenge of prevailing orthodoxy, so-called "groupthink".
What links these biases is that they increase greatly the chances of a large, perhaps even
catastrophic, error of judgement. History, including economic history, provides a rich catalogue
of these errors, from autocratic emperors, kings and rulers overtaken by hubris to inert
academics and policymakers consumed by consensus. Fortunately, social institutions have
often adapted to lean against these biases. Indeed, some have argued that these institutional
safeguards are the reason some nations succeed and others fail.30
One bulwark against bias comes from placing decision-making in the hands of a committee,
diverse in its composition, independent in its mindset. Experimental evidence suggests that,
so comprised, committees make for more robust decisions. They do so by avoiding large
21
For example, McKinsey (2015).
22
For example, O'Reilly (1998).
23
Florida (2002), Ottaviano and Peri (2005).
24
Florida (2003).
25
Goldin et al (2011).
26
Ashraf and Galor (2013), Ager and Bruckner (2013), Bellini et al (2013), Alesina et al (2015).
27
Alesina et al (2015).
28
Kahneman (2012).
29
For example, Haldane (2014).
30
Acemoglu and Robinson (2013).
errors, by leaning against the eccentricities of individuals and the groupthink of crowds.31
Decision-making diversity makes for greater systemic resilience.
Such diverse perspectives have also been found to improve our powers of clairvoyance. In his
recent book "Super-Forecasting", Philip Tetlock explores what makes for a good forecast,
based on experimental and real-world experience.32 A set of forecasters with diverse
perspectives, experiences and ideas is found to be a key ingredient. Indeed, teams of diverse
amateurs have been shown to out-perform experts in some settings. In other words, there is
forecasting wisdom in crowds, provided they are cognitively diverse.
Over time, these insights have found their way into institutional design. For example, diverse
decision-making underlies judicial practices in many countries - for example, the design of the
US Supreme Court.33 It is also embodied in the design of the Bank of England's policy
committees - the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), Financial Policy Committee (FPC) and
Prudential Regulation Committee (PRC). Each comprises internal and external members,
individually accountable and drawn from diverse backgrounds.34
The global financial crisis provides the example, par excellence, of the resilience benefits of
diversity. A lack of intellectual diversity sowed the seeds of the crisis. So too, arguably, did a
lack of gender diversity.35 And a lack of diversity within the financial eco-system - with many
institutions holding very similar portfolios - fed and watered these seeds. This lack of diversity,
intellectual and financial, contributed significantly to the depth and severity of the crisis.36 This
old lesson from evolutionary biology and systems theory was learned painfully and abruptly by
policymakers and practitioners in 2008.
What applies at the level of institutions and systems may also apply at the level of nation states.
Democracy can be thought of as a sociological mechanism for maximising the diversity of
decision-making. By design, it leans against the hubris bias of autocracy or monarchy while
reducing the groupthink bias of single-party rule. As synergy is diversity, so too is democracy.
And for the same reasons as among institutions and eco-systems, democracy has also been
found to make for more robust decision-making.37
So much for the benefits. None of this is to say that diversity is costless. History is littered with
examples of the problems associated with integrating and assimilating diverse peoples.
Several recent empirical studies have corroborated those perceptions, again at both the micro
and macro scale. For example, there is evidence that diversity in the workplace may
sometimes lower employee morale and job performance.38 And there is evidence that racially
diverse communities have fewer social interactions and thus are associated with lower levels
of trust.39
At the macro level, studies drawing on cross-country experience have suggested that certain
measures of diversity - in particular, the degree of ethnic fragmentation - may sometimes be
associated with lower levels of economic growth.40 One explanation for this finding is that
31
Lombardielli et al (2005)
32
Tetllock (2015).
33
Iaryczower et al (2013)
34
Haldane (2014).
35
Lagarde (2014).
36
Haldane (2009).
37
Landemore (2013).
38
Guillaume et al (2015).
39
Alesina and La Ferrara (2000).
40
Easterly and Levine (1997), Alesina et al (2003).
fragmentation may make it harder for society to agree on the public goods it wishes to provide
- transport, schools, energy, defence - thereby retarding growth.41 Another is simply that it
increases the risk of conflict and friction, which absorbs human and social capital and thus
damages growth.
The potential fragility of more complex systems is a familiar theme from other disciplines too.
In ecological biology, complex eco-systems, like tropical rainforests, are known to be more
fragile than simple ones, such as savannahs. Cascades, conflicts and contagion are both more
likely and more potent, the greater the number of interacting parts. That means complex
societies, like complex eco-systems and financial systems, may exhibit a "robust-yet-fragile"
property.42 The greater richness of the rainforest or cosmopolitan city may come at a cost.
So diversity is no one-way street, no panacea. It confers collective social and economic
benefits, at both the micro and macro level, but at some cost. Which one is likely to win the
day? The cost/benefit balance seems to be context-specific. It also seems to depend on a
country's level of economic development.43 For developing countries, there is evidence this
balance may sometimes be growth-negative. For developed countries, the evidence is more
compellingly growth-positive, perhaps owing to their more developed public and social
infrastructure to support diversity.
Diversity of what?
Thus far, I have used the word "diversity" in a very general sense. That is inadequate when it
comes to crafting policies which promote diversity. Diversity of what exactly? Specifically from
a policy perspective, which dimensions of diversity are most important if we wish to maximise
the social externalities it confers?
In his book, The Difference, Scott Page distinguishes identity diversity (race, gender, ethnicity,
age etc) and cognitive diversity (intelligence, problem-solving, personality etc).44 To this, we
might usefully add a third - experiential diversity (socio-economic background, skills,
experiences etc). While there is some overlap between them, these measures are conceptually
distinct: the first physiological and pure nature; the second neurological and part nature, part
nurture; the third environmental and pure nurture.
The aspect of diversity most extensively studied is identity, specifically ethnicity and gender.
That is for the very simple reason that these dimensions of diversity are the ones most easily
observable and, latterly, reportable. Moreover, there is plenty of evidence, accumulated over
recent years, which suggests that identity-diversity can yield significant social benefits, in part
at least because it serves as a proxy for cognitive and experiential diversity.
For example, research by McKinsey has looked at how gender and ethnic diversity affect firm
performance.45 Looking at a wide cross-section of international firms, it finds that companies
with higher levels of ethnic and gender diversity have tended to out-perform less diverse
companies, often by material amounts. These effects are stronger, the greater is the degree
of diversity on these companies' leadership teams. Diversity, in short, supports the bottom line
of the annual report, not just the CSR paragraph.
And what is true of companies appears also to be true of cities. Researchers have created
"creativity indices" for cities measuring their degree of technological innovation and
dynamism.46 There is a striking correlation between these indices and a city's degree of sexual
and ethnic diversity - cities such as San Francisco, Boston and Seattle in the US, and also
London, Dublin, Vancouver and Sydney. It seems a vibrant city both helps create, and is
created by, a diverse and cosmopolitan populace in a virtuous loop.47
The source of these benefits may well lie, at least in part, in behavioural differences between
groups. The most extensively studied of these differences is between the sexes. For example,
men have been found to exhibit greater levels of risk-taking than women.48 The reasons for
this appear to be partly physiological, given the larger amounts of testosterone generated by
the male body.49 This risk-taking bias, taken together with the strong male bias within the
financial services sector, has led some to posit a causal link between the lack of gender
diversity and the global financial crisis.50
There is also evidence of systematic differences in approaches to decision-making between
the sexes. Men tend to attach to a single principle, or heuristic, when making decisions and
then stick with it. Women, by contrast, show a greater willingness to switch between
decisionmaking principles and heuristics, depending on the context.51 Or, to caricature things a little,
women multi-task while men have one-track minds.
Recent neurological research has explored whether there is a link between these behavioural
traits and the wiring of the brain using imaging techniques. It is early days. But one recent
study found gender differences in the wiring between the left and right cerebral hemispheres,
with women exhibiting greater connectivity between hemispheres and men showing greater
connectivity within each hemisphere.52 This wiring difference might explain women's
superiority at multi-tasking and men's greater spatial awareness.
Yet it is important to place these behavioural and cognitive differences in context. Even if
neurological differences exist, they should not be exaggerated. For example, research has
suggested these gender differences are typically smaller than the differences in brain wiring
that exist within each gender. Or, put differently, neuroscientists have challenged the notion
that brains are either "male" or "female". Instead, most brains are transgender, a property
known as "mosaicism".53
Our androgynous brains are also far from static. They evolve and re-wire over time in response
to experience and circumstance. Neurologists call this property "plasticity".54 The malleability
of our brains means that differences in the environment facing the sexes can have a lasting
impact on their behaviour. Indeed, some studies have suggested that, once allowance is made
for these environmental factors, behavioural differences between the sexes effectively
disappear.
For example, differences in the relative competitiveness of the sexes tend to be equalised once
environmental factors are take into account.55 And differences in mathematical performance
46
This is measured as the fraction of high-tech industry output relative to that in the economy as a whole.
47
Florida (2002, 2011).
48
For example, Charness and Gneezy (2012).
49
Coates (2012).
50
For example, Lagarde (2014), Davies (2015).
51
For example, Ertac and Gurdle (2011).
52
Ingalhalikar et al (2014)
53
Joel et al (2015)
54
Brooks (2011) .
55
Wozniak et al (2009), Cardenas et al (2014).
between the sexes, often apparent in simple tests, tend similarly to disappear once attempts
are made to create an environment which avoids gender stereotyping about numerical ability.56
Overall, then, identity-based characteristics, such as gender and ethnicity, may provide a
useful basis for judging some aspects of behavioural diversity. But these differences may be
as much the result of differences in environment and cognition as identity per se. Identity may
be more measurable proxy, than root cause, of diverse decision-making.57 The evidence here
is revealing.
Looked at through an historical lens, the "Medici effect" - historical episodes of great leaps
forward in ideas and innovation - typically arose from a melding of cultures, disciplines and
experiences, rather than genders. The creativity exhibited by five-year old children derives
from their cognitive processes, not their gender or ethnicity. Tetlock's "super-forecasters" are
defined by their cognitive and environmental diversity, not their identity. And crowd-sourcing
and gamification are means of harnessing the cognitive and experiential creativity of crowds,
blind to their identities. And so on.
Moving the diversity dial
Against this backdrop, what might be done to support diversity? The "first wave" of diversity
initiatives has been building steadily over recent decades. This has tended to focus on
identitybased characteristics, such as gender and ethnicity. And it is heartening to know that
considerable progress has been made here.
Trends in female labour market participation have improved significantly. The employ