ABSTRACT
Other Ideas One of James Surowiecki’s biggest supporting themes is the importance of diversity, specifically cognitive diversity, and how to achieve it within a group or organization. Cognitive diversity is the “differences in perspective or information processing styles. It is not predicted by factors such as gender, ethnicity, or age.”1 Non-experts, according to Surowiecki, add value simply because they think about a problem in different ways. This can help prevent the group from making the same mistakes over and over, and from failing to consider non-traditional or innovative solutions. Surowiecki is adamant that even those group members who have no direct knowledge on a topic can, in the right circumstances, add value simply by thinking about the problem in a different way.
