Innovation Strategy - Exploiting 2-D Diversity

Innovation strategy can be shaped successfully by exploiting two-dimensional diversity in an organization. Companies should look at diversity in two ways: inherent, which includes demographics such as gender, age and ethnicity, and acquired, which focuses on experience-related traits such as working with niche markets or overseas experience. Companies that exhibit at least three traits in each category attain two-dimensional diversity. This diversity empowers employees to share and create new ideas, pushing them past their comfort zones to innovate. Successful examples of diverse companies include Google, Pepsico and Procter & Gamble.