How diversity makes teams more innovative | Rocío Lorenzo | TED

Summary

Rocío Lorenzo argues that diversity should be treated as a business and innovation priority—not just a compliance obligation or a matter of fairness. Her team’s research found that more diverse companies were more innovative, with gender diversity in leadership linked to higher innovation revenue once women exceeded a critical-mass threshold.

Research and findings

• In a study with the Technical University of Munich, the team surveyed 171 companies in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. At the time of the talk, the research was being expanded to 1,600 companies in five additional countries.
• Innovation revenue was measured as the share of revenue from products and services introduced in the previous three years. This measures outcomes rather than the number of ideas.
• Diversity was assessed across six factors, including country of origin, age, and gender.
• The study found an association between diversity and innovation: more diverse companies were more innovative, and more innovative companies also had more diverse leadership. The research did not establish how much of this relationship is causal or which direction drives the other.
• For gender diversity, the data showed a notable increase in innovation revenue when women made up more than 20% of leadership. A single woman on a board was not enough to reach that threshold.

Business playbook and recommendations

• Set measurable representation goals. Treat leadership diversity like any other business improvement area: define a target and timeline, then track progress.
• Focus on decisions with the greatest organizational impact: whom to hire, and whom to develop and promote. Lorenzo describes these as the strongest day-to-day signals of change.
• Use targets to broaden talent practices. Goals can prompt companies to develop leaders more creatively and recruit from a wider range of talent pools.
• Aim for critical mass, not token representation. The study’s gender-diversity findings suggest that simply adding one woman to a leadership team may not be enough to affect innovation.
• Diversity programs, networks, mentoring, and training can help, but Lorenzo emphasizes that hiring and promotion decisions ultimately shape who gains influence.

Examples and metrics

• SAP: In 2011, women held 19% of leadership positions. SAP set a target of 25% by 2017, achieved it, and then set a new target of 30% by 2022. Lorenzo says these goals encouraged more creative leadership-development and recruiting approaches.
• Germany’s largest publicly listed companies: At the time of the talk, only 30 of the 100 had at least one woman on the board; 70 had all-male boards, and none had a female CEO.
• Lorenzo also cites Alibaba, JPMorgan, and Apple as companies that had reached the more-than-20% women-in-leadership threshold.

Presenters and sources

• Presenter: Rocío Lorenzo
• Research collaborator: Technical University of Munich
• Study sample: 171 companies in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Expansion to 1,600 companies in five additional countries was underway at the time of the talk.