Is there any value in diversity for its own sake?
If I'm trying to build a rocket to go to Mars, give me the best people, not the people that would look best in a university recruiting photograph.
If I'm trying to build a rocket to go to Mars, give me the best people, not the people that would look best in a university recruiting photograph.
The more diverse the backgrounds and thought patterns are of people on a team, the more likely they'll think of and consider solutions and paths that might not have been considered otherwise -- or see pitfalls in them.
If you're building a rocket to go to Mars, you absolutely want as much diversity in your engineering backgrounds as possible (assuming everyone already meets the engineering requirements in the first place).
It seems I spend a great deal of my time trying to communicate things I already know with people of "diverse" thinking styles.
Don't worry about people being robotic clones of each other. It almost never happens. There is diversity enough without seeking out more blatant diversity.
I don't know. How would you test that hypothesis?
My unfounded speculation is that, like genetic diversity helps produce a healthy and robust organism, so does diversity of perspective make an organization more fit to respond to a variety of conditions.
That may or may not be of value, depending on the goals of the organization.