The Hidden Factor: Why Thinking Differently Is Your Greatest Asset

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 Outline

01: Individual Diversity and Collective Performance

Explore the importance of diversity and the types you will cover, laying the groundwork for the discussion ahead.

Duration: 30 min

02: Why Now? The Rise of Diversity

Investigate the key trends that have made diversity a hot topic and understand the necessity of leveraging diverse thought.

Duration: 30 min

03: Diversity Squared

Examine the changing connotations of diversity and the connection between cognitive and identity diversity.

Duration: 29 min

04: The Wisdom of Crowds

Learn how diverse thinking contributes to a group’s ability to make accurate predictions through the diversity prediction theorem.

Duration: 31 min

05: The Diversity Prediction Theorem Times Three

Analyze the Netflix Prize case to see how diverse ideas can lead to successful outcomes in real-world applications.

Duration: 29 min

06: The Weighting Is the Hardest Part

Discover strategies for assembling productive teams by understanding how to assign unequal weights to opinions and predictions.

Duration: 29 min

07: Foxes and Hedgehogs—Can I Be Diverse?

Compare the traits of the “fox” and the “hedgehog” to see how being a many-model thinker impacts your predictive abilities.

Duration: 28 min

08: Fermi’s Barbers—Estimating and Predicting

Hone your predictive skills with a discussion of various models and learn which phenomena can be predicted.

Duration: 32 min

09: Problem Solving

Trace the ways problem-solving differs from prediction and how diverse heuristics can help devise better solutions.

Duration: 29 min

10: Diverse Perspectives

Explore how new perspectives can bring order to complex questions and expand the set of the “adjacent possible.”

Duration: 30 min

11: Heuristics and the Adjacent Possible

Consider how diverse heuristics produce outside-the-box thinking and simplify difficult problems.

Duration: 31 min

12: Diversity Trumps Ability

Learn how a diverse group can outperform a team of the best talent when faced with complex problems.

Duration: 27 min

13: Digging Holes and Splicing Genes

Delve into the implications of the diversity prediction theorem for groups and individuals in the context of societal changes.

Duration: 30 min

14: Ability and Diversity

Examine the relationship between intelligence and diversity, and how to balance these elements for maximum output.

Duration: 30 min

15: Combining and Recombining Heuristics

Explore how innovation stems from recombining existing ideas and what this means for future advancements.

Duration: 28 min

16: Beware of False Prophets—No Free Lunch

Learn about the conditionality of heuristics and the importance of having a diverse set of tools in a complex world.

Duration: 30 min

17: Crowdsourcing and the Limits of Diversity

Investigate the benefits and limitations of crowdsourcing in problem-solving and decision-making processes.

Duration: 31 min

18: Experimentation, Variation, and Six Sigma

Understand how variation can enhance performance and when it should be minimized through anti-variation strategies.

Duration: 30 min

19: Diversity and Robustness

Examine how diversity contributes to system robustness and the implications for organizations and ecosystems.

Duration: 30 min

20: Inescapable Benefits of Diversity

Learn why diverse groups often outperform homogeneous ones and the conditions under which diversity is beneficial.

Duration: 34 min

21: The Historical Value of Diversity

Explore how the need for diversity has echoed throughout human history and its implications for societal progress.

Duration: 30 min

22: Homophily, Incentives, and Groupthink

Understand the dangers of groupthink and the processes that lead to conformity within groups.

Duration: 31 min

23: The Problem of Diverse Preferences

Examine how preference diversity creates challenges and the difference between fundamental and instrumental disagreements.

Duration: 30 min

24: The Team. The Team. The Team.

Conclude with the importance of shared goals in teams and the case for embracing dissent to foster innovation.

Duration: 30 min