My personal experience
working with diverse teams
had been that while they require
a little bit more effort at the beginning,
they did bring fresher,
more creative ideas.
So I wanted to know:
Are diverse organizations
really more innovative,
and can diversity be more
than something to comply with?
Can it be a real competitive advantage?
So to find out, we set up a study
with the Technical University of Munich.
We surveyed 171 companies
in Germany, Austria and Switzerland,
and as we speak, we're expanding the study
to 1,600 companies
in five additional countries
around the world.
We asked those companies
basically two things:
how innovative they are
and how diverse they are.
To measure the first one,
we asked them about innovation revenue.
Innovation revenue is the share
of revenues they've made
from new products and services
in the last three years,
meaning we did not ask them
how many creative ideas they have,
but rather if these ideas
translate into products and services
that really make the company
more successful today and tomorrow.