1.) a shared "purpose" to me is literally the same as a "Shared intellectual approach" -- purpose is a synonym of what I was trying to say.
2.) I strongly disagree that "disagreeing with the way you do certain things within the frames/boundaries of pre-agreed purposes and projects" is what anyone is trying to say when they talk about "intellectual diversity." If your definition of intellectual diversity (just inferring here so lmk if I'm wrong) is "disagreeing about how a job should be done," then literally every company on Earth is diverse by that metric, so its not a particularly useful metric IMO.
3.) IMO when people refer to "intellectual diversity" they are referring to having strongly held and opposing viewpoints about issues that are much larger than "how this job should be done." The viewpoints that qualify as "intellectually diverse" in all discussions of the concept I've read are referring to politics and/or religion.
I respect that you have an effective working process with diverse and strong viewpoints about software, but I think that strongly opposing viewpoints about software do not meet the commonly-held criteria for "intellectual diversity." Strongly-held opposing viewpoints about religion and politics do.
Compared to politics and religion, It's easy and fun for you and your coworkers to strongly disagree about software development. When you guys strongly disagree about that topic, the final outcome (as you just described) is positive: Everyone learns new things and your product gets better.
But it's extremely difficult and potentially way less fun for you and your co-workers to strongly disagree about politics and/or religion while still having a positive final outcome for all involved.
My question is this: do you know anyone who can? Because if anyone can provide me with a link to an article/blog post about "intellectual diversity" as it seems to be defined in common parlance -- I.e. "group members holding strongly opposing viewpoints about politics and/or religion" -- let me know because I'd be fascinated to read about it.
My curiousity is this: I wonder if intellectually diverse organizations share characteristics and if there was a way to map all organizations and find out which ones are "intellectually diverse" and what commonalities they share. Some part of me wonders if CrossFit and yoga would be the most intellectually diverse but the other part thinks maybe they're self-selecting for some tribal/religious/political qualities that I'm not even aware of. Would be cool to find out :)