The Hidden Factor: Why Thinking Differently Is Your Greatest Asset

by Scott E. Page

From technology to business, two (or more) heads often prove to be better than one-but only if those heads are cognitively diverse. Top-performing companies, universities, and innovation centers are increasingly finding ways to encourage a greater exchange of ideas among their staff. Scientific journals continue to see the number of authors per paper rise, while both Nobel Prizes and patents are frequently granted to teams. The need for group problem solving has never been more critical. So what's driving the demand? The changing nature of work: The complexity of challenges faced by today's "creative class" has produced a new reliance on teams. A group with diverse experience and education can often more effectively provide solutions by bringing myriad viewpoints to the table. Demographic trends and technology: Technology is making the world smaller and connecting us with diverse sets of people and ideas. Our cultural identities influence everything from the books we read to the stories we hear in childhood and, thus, the way we make sense of the world.

Genres: Psychology, Leadership, Business, Nonfiction, Self Help, Science

Audiobook

First published January 1, 2012

Reviews

[Ali Sattari]

This dug much deeper in notions of diversity, crowd sourcing, prediction markets and team problem solving. Loved it.

[Mark Lawry]

For decades it has been explained to me that the reason HR departments within companies, universities, and industries push for diversity is not because we need diversity in itself but because we want every child to grow up knowing that if they study and work hard they can be anything they want. Fair enough. It turns out this argument has always been wrong, or better, a half truth. We really do want diversity in each industry for the benefit of industries themselves. This course is the science and math behind why this is a fact.

While great economics and I loved it I'll admit not for everyone. A bit dry statistics and math for a long stretch.

[Eileen]

3.75 stars

[Paul Botterill]

Fascinating book. A little geeky at times with all the maths but it provided a lot of useful information about the benefits of cognitive diversity

[Todd Cheng]

Love this topic, vernacular, organization of elements, and voice of this professor. A fascinating topic that contains multitudes of benefits across domains of expertise.

[Taylor]

I enjoyed this focused look into diversity, covering the benefits, requirements, varieties, etc. It did feel a little long, because the message "diversity is typically beneficial" gets a little repetitive in each lecture, but it's good content with nice insights aside from the central theme. Perspective, robustness, specialization, creativity, crowds, predictions, and heuristics are some of the topics covered through the lens of diversity.

[Lynette Ackman]

Interesting. I was expecting a “typical” book on the benefits of diversity… but this is approached from a mathematical perspective. As a self-proclaimed math geek, I found the different tactic interesting.

[Marc]

Interesting concepts explained with maths and algorithms. But repeated over and over.

Cognitive diversity trumping ability.
Diversity matters.
Importance of keeping different models (heuristics and perspectives) in your mind.
Variation helping with a adaptability…

[Caesar]

Diversity from a more mathematical perspective. Very interesting view on diversity in tools and models. Cognitive diversity makes so much (more) sense (than identity diversity)!

[Mark]

Great ideas but a bit too much maths for my liking.

[Satsuma]

DNF

[Robert]

Meh

[Dino Jurina]

felt like this should be a lot shorter

[Niamh]

Note to self: Listen again some time - Interesting series of lectures

[Eric]

The content seems overall interesting but the way in which it was presented was unsatisfactory. For one thing, so much of the course was fluff--it could have been delivered in twelve lectures or less. And Scott Page makes several errors in mathematical derivations and skips over certain steps, whose omission makes the proofs unnecessarily confusing to understand.