Overview

Learn the strategies that make you a more diverse thinker and position you to break down institutional silos and build robust, effective teams, delivered by a pioneering researcher in his field.

From technology to business, two (or more) heads often prove to be better than one—but only if those heads are cognitively diverse. Diverse perspectives are a powerful tool for maximizing productivity and enhancing collective performance. Now, in The Hidden Factor: Why Thinking Differently Is Your Greatest Asset, you can learn the strategies that make you a more diverse thinker and position you to break down institutional silos and build robust, effective teams.

Delivered by Professor Scott E. Page of the University of Michigan—a pioneering researcher in his field—these 24 thought-provoking lectures are packed with case studies, cautionary tales, and formal mathematical methods that prove the case for cognitive difference.

Course Structure

01: Individual Diversity and Collective Performance

In this opening lecture, Professor Page shares his intellectual excitement for the topic of diversity as he presents an outline for the course. Explanations of the importance of diversity, the types of diversity you will be covering, and the “big ideas” that motivate the course lay the groundwork for the discussion ahead.

Duration: 30 min

02: Why Now? The Rise of Diversity

How do cognitive diversity and identity diversity differ? Where do they intersect? Investigate the key trends that have made diversity such a hot topic and understand why leveraging diversity of thought is necessary to meet today’s challenges.

Duration: 30 min

03: Diversity Squared

What does the professor really mean when he says “diversity”? Examine the connotations commonly associated with the term and how the notion of diversity is changing. Further your understanding of the connection between cognitive and identity diversity as you begin your exploration of the “diversity bonus.”

Duration: 29 min

04: The Wisdom of Crowds

How can diverse ways of thinking contribute to a group’s ability to make accurate predictions? Walk through the diversity prediction theorem using clear examples—from guessing the weight of a steer to the height of the tallest building in Rio de Janeiro—to learn why the diversity and talent level of a crowd’s members play equal roles.

Duration: 31 min

05: The Diversity Prediction Theorem Times Three

Now, turn to another application of forecasting: using knowledge of a population to more appropriately serve it. Analyze the case of the Netflix Prize—where teams competed to outperform the company’s movie-prediction model, Cinematch—to see how putting a diverse “ensemble” of ideas into action proved successful in the real world.

Duration: 29 min

06: The Weighting Is the Hardest Part

Determining how much we listen to some people at the expense of others requires careful analysis. Learn strategies for assembling productive teams by zeroing in on the conditions that make assigning unequal weights to certain opinions and predictions desirable.

Duration: 29 min

07: Foxes and Hedgehogs—Can I Be Diverse?

The course of your life depends on a handful of key decisions that are based on making predictions, from where you live to the career you choose. Compare the traits of the “fox,” who knows many things, and the “hedgehog,” who knows one big thing, to see how being a many-model thinker can impact your ability to make more accurate predictions.

Duration: 28 min

08: Fermi’s Barbers—Estimating and Predicting

Hone your predictive skills with a discussion of four models: analogies, Fermi’s method or dimensional analysis, linear decomposition, and trend analysis. Learn which types of phenomena may be predicted—and which cannot—and why in this information age, we need to make estimations and predictions at all.

Duration: 32 min

09: Problem Solving

As you turn your attention to problem solving, trace the ways it differs from prediction and how diverse heuristics—tricks, algorithms, and rules of thumb—can help devise better solutions. In this lecture, you’ll encounter a key insight of the course: A person’s contribution depends on individual talent and diversity relative to the team in equal measure.

Duration: 29 min

10: Diverse Perspectives

Laser technology exists because Einstein saw light in a completely new way. Charge ahead with problem solving by exploring how a new perspective can bring order to complex questions. Analyze how diverse perspectives expand the set of the “adjacent possible,” and play a game of Sum to 15 to see how new perspectives can be transcendent.

Duration: 30 min

11: Heuristics and the Adjacent Possible

Take your study of the “adjacent possible” to the next level by considering how diverse heuristics produce outside-the-box thinking and transcendent perspectives simplify difficult problems. Learn how individuals, organizations, and computers all use heuristics of varying levels of sophistication, and why computers may have an advantage.

Duration: 31 min

12: Diversity Trumps Ability

A diverse group can outperform a team of the best talent, provided the problems are hard, the people differ, and the members have germane knowledge. Hear about the experiments that opened the professor’s eyes to diversity’s value in problem solving. Then, learn how the diversity prediction theorem illustrates how differences in perspectives and heuristics enable us to find better solutions.

Duration: 27 min

13: Digging Holes and Splicing Genes

Delve more deeply into the diversity prediction theorem. Think about its implications for groups and individuals, and how it adds to your understanding of the paradigm-shifting trends related to changes in the nature of work, global demographics, and the proliferation of technology. Conclude with a look at models that inform decisions of hiring and college admissions.

Duration: 30 min

14: Ability and Diversity

Can people be ranked in order of intelligence? Consider IQ tests in light of the course’s toolbox model of intelligence. Then, shift to a tree-of-knowledge-style model to think about with greater subtlety the connections between diversity and ability. Learn how to balance those elements and effectively structure teams for maximum output.

Duration: 30 min

15: Combining and Recombining Heuristics

From the telegraph to the laser, a great deal of innovation stems from taking existing ideas, technologies, and tools and recombining them. Explore how ideas combine and recombine to drive economic growth. Then, probe how society can ensure continued innovation. Do we let people own ideas? Or do we set them free?

Duration: 28 min

16: Beware of False Prophets—No Free Lunch

In a rapidly changing, complex world, having a diverse set of tools is imperative. In this lecture, you’ll focus on formal and informal heuristics—procedures that try to improve performance—through a comparison of popular business and self-help books. Then, ponder opposite proverbs and the “no free lunch” theorem to comprehend the conditionality of heuristics.

Duration: 30 min

17: Crowdsourcing and the Limits of Diversity

Big companies like Microsoft and Pfizer don’t necessarily make their problems and solutions public. Would they be better off if they did? Revisit the Netflix competition and look at other fascinating case studies as you weigh the benefits and limitations of crowdsourcing, the practice of offering up a problem to a population.

Duration: 31 min

18: Experimentation, Variation, and Six Sigma

How do diversity and variation differ? Analyze how variation can make individual and system-level performance more robust by enabling faster adaptation. Conversely, learn about the six sigma movement toward anti-variation and when variation should be prevented through minimizing experimentation.

Duration: 30 min

19: Diversity and Robustness

Before discussing how diversity contributes to system robustness, the professor takes a moment to reiterate the definition of robustness and the differences between variation and diversity. Analyze how portfolio effects, Ashby’s law of requisite variety, and redundancy and overlap support the case for diversity.

Duration: 30 min

20: Inescapable Benefits of Diversity

Diverse ecologies, cities, and groups often outperform their homogeneous counterparts. Learn why this is often the case, then identify why additional contributions sometimes produce negative results or diminishing returns. Participate in a thought experiment involving diverse ecosystems to drive home the lesson.

Duration: 34 min

21: The Historical Value of Diversity

See how the need for diversity has echoed throughout human history by evaluating how lack of cognitive difference leads to stagnation. You’ll weigh the literal implications of the business adage “adapt or die” through tales of collapsed civilizations, including the Easter Islanders, the Anasazi of the American Southwest, and the Mayans of Central America.

Duration: 30 min

22: Homophily, Incentives, and Groupthink

Groups aren’t always productive. In this lecture, the professor cautions against the dangers of groupthink and defines four processes that explain why it occurs: conformity, drift, homophily, and common incentives. Learn strategies to avoid the phenomenon, both as an individual who wants to stand out from the crowd and as an organization.

Duration: 31 min

23: The Problem of Diverse Preferences

Can disagreement be desirable? Through a more in-depth look at homophily—the propensity to associate with like-minded people—and Arrow’s impossibility theorem, see how preference diversity creates problems and why good outcomes are often conflated with comfort. Discern the key differences between fundamental disagreements vs. instrumental disagreements.

Duration: 30 min

24: The Team. The Team. The Team.

What challenges should you take on? What should your objective function be? In this final lecture, you’ll understand the critical importance of teams sharing a common goal, as well as the case for embracing dissent. You’ll revisit preference diversity to pinpoint conditions in which it can hinder progress or help prevent collapse.

Duration: 30 min