Does a Different View Create Something New?

Researchers found that gender diversity leads to a higher likelihood of introducing innovations at the workplace. Furthermore, a positive relationship between an open culture towards diversity and innovative performance is found. „This provides empirical evidence to the model of the Propelling Potential Principle which links differences, open-mindedness and inclusion to create value added,” Diversity expert Michael Stuber comments. A study of 1,648 Danish firms shows that there is a positive relation between the employee diversity based on the characteristics of all employees and the firms’ likelihood to innovate. It thus appears that not only diversity in terms of technologies or top management team composition, but also on the level of employees matters for a firm’s innovation performance. The results for the gender sub group indicate that very low levels and very high levels of diversity are not significantly different from each other. Nevertheless a moderate degree of diversity, i. e. a degree of diversity where the minority group has a critical mass to contribute to the innovation process, appears to have higher likelihood of introducing an innovation. The analysis shows that gender diversity is one of the variables that has the strongest impact in this respect.
The quantitative analysis was based on innovation survey data from the DISKO41 questionnaire survey on organisations, employees and research and development strategies in Danish firms. The survey population included all firms that had participated in the previous DISKO survey, all firms with more than 100 fulltime employees in the selected industries and a sample of firms with less than 50 employees and 50–99 employees to make the sample representative to the population of Danish firms. The questionnaire was sent to the management of 4,136 companies, 1,775 answers were received, which delivered a response rate of 42.9%.
This summary is one of the 135 study portrays included in ‘International Business Case Report (IBCR) 2012-XL’ that has recently been published by European Diversity Research & Consulting. Further information can be found online: here