Beyond diversity

Innovation requires looking at the world from different perspectives and developing new connections between existing ideas, which is why you need diverse and interdisciplinary teams. When the team members work for the same company and share a deep understanding of their business, it can still be a challenge to think outside the box.

Fortunately, we’ve experienced that bringing in unusual outsiders who are willing to challenge the status quo is an easy solution for this. They encourage the whole team to use their explorative mindset resulting in more innovative ideas. Be aware that selecting the right type of outsider is a serious task and that one outsider can easily be overruled. Usually you need to bring in at least three outsiders to counterbalance groupthink. The bigger the transformation you need to make, the more outsiders you need to contribute fresh perspectives. Sometimes it makes sense to create a group that consists only of outsiders to challenge your thinking and accelerate transformation. 

What do your innovation teams look like? Do you partner with outsiders to accelerate transformation?