I am not the first person to draw attention to the connection between inclusion of diversity and innovation. What I note has been the most obvious blind spot is the leaders’ need for personal innovation that addresses the problem of traditional diversity training. However, before we get to that, let’s take a closer look at the topic of diversity and why it matters.

In 2015, McKinsey published a report in which 366 companies were investigated based on their diversity. Businesses that had a diverse quartile in their ethnic and racial diversity earned 35 percent more revenue than the market average.

A global analysis of 2,400 Credit Suisse companies showed similar results. Companies with at least one woman in the top position generated more revenue growth and equity returns than companies in which no women were included at the top of the management hierarchy. Could recent revelations about Microsoft’s struggles with an organizational culture firmly resistant to the inclusion of diversity shed light on the company’s market challenges over the past decade?

In recent years, there have been several studies that uncover another significant benefit of diversity within teams: They are smarter. Working together with people who are different from you challenges your brain to think in a new way. This requires setting aside the natural tendency of most people to fear and resist change. The situation is made more murky by studies of thousands of trainings showing that traditional training for diversity inclusion is not effective and, in fact, can incite bias.

More focused on the facts and embracing thinking outside the box

People with different backgrounds can change the image of what is considered normal within the social majority and generate a new way of thinking within a group.

In a study published in the American scientific journal Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 200 people were assigned to a sham jury of six, all white or made up of four white and two non-white. Together they watched a video of a lawsuit involving a black suspect and white victims. They then had to decide if the suspect was guilty.

It turned out that the mixed juries managed to uncover more facts about the case and made fewer errors of fact in discussing the matter. If errors occurred, they were corrected in the same discussion. One possible explanation for this was that the mixed panels examined the evidence more closely.

Another study shows similar results. In a series of experiments from Texas and Singapore, scientists allow people with an economic study to walk through a simulated supermarket and guess the price of products. The participants were divided into homogeneous or ethnically differentiated teams. People in the diverse group guessed prices 58 percent more often than participants in the other group.

Diversity teams continue to be more objective in different situations. By creating more diversity, you make teams aware of their biases, something that can blind them to essential information.

Personal innovation strategy

Diverse teams are more innovative, this is now a well-demonstrated reality.

To remain competitive, companies must find ways to cultivate innovation. Research shows that one of the best ways to transform yourself and your product is to embrace diversity within your company.

The gender diversity of 4,277 Spanish companies was investigated within the R&D teams. The teams with more women achieved a more radical renewal in two years than the teams where men were the majority.

Another study suggested that cultural diversity is key to innovation. The researchers analyzed data from 7,615 companies that participated in the London Annual Business Survey, an investigation into the performance of companies. Companies that noted cultural diversity at their peak developed more new products than those with similar top executives. Forward-looking valuable events and effective thinking from the outside can become the new normal with teams getting smarter by better understanding the blind spots of innovation.

The incorporation of people of different genders, races, ethnicities, origins and nationalities can boost the innovation capacity of the company. However, if it were that simple, it wouldn’t be such a persistent problem. This is where personal innovation, especially in leadership development, is so valuable. Leaders must lead by example. Embrace a lifestyle of personal innovation that harnesses the pursuit of happiness to nurture personal courage to step forward and do the right thing more often.

Leveraging personally meaningful goals is key to personal innovation strategies that circumvent common problems with diversity trainings and innovation capacity development programs. This means that there is no one-size-fits-all solution per se. Instead, it requires cultivating the strategy to guide a lifestyle of inner growth, clarity, and wisdom.

Innovative new approaches to transforming challenges into launching pads will help you become the gentle leader needed for the increasingly diverse workforce and markets of today and tomorrow. Taking a step forward is the key to discovering your personal innovation path. Artistic solutions based on imagination as a method allow people to become aware of their prejudices, discover what they are based on and learn to make better decisions. This will make leadership more successful no matter what the specific goals are. In short, smart leaders have to find new courage, wisdom, and inspiration to meet these present and emerging challenges.