I am not the first person to draw attention to the connection between diversity, inclusion and innovation. What I point to as the most obvious blind spot is the need for personal innovation from leaders that addresses the issue with traditional diversity training. However, before we get to that, let’s take a closer look at diversity and why it matters.

In 2015, McKinsey published a report that investigated 366 companies based on their diversity. Companies that were a diverse quartile in their ethnic and racial diversity had 35 percent more revenue than the market average.

In a global analysis of 2,400 companies, Credit Suisse showed similar results. Companies with at least one woman at the top generated higher revenue growth and return on capital than companies that did not include women at the top of the management hierarchy. Could recent revelations about Microsoft’s struggles with an organizational culture staunchly resistant to diversity inclusion shed light on the company’s market challenges over the past decade?

In recent years, several studies have been conducted that reveal another significant benefit of diversity within teams: they are simply smarter. Working together with people who are different from you challenges your brain to think in a new way. This requires letting go of most people’s natural tendency to fear and resist change. The situation is made more murky by studies of thousands of trainings showing that traditional diversity inclusion training is not effective and can actually incite prejudice.

More focused on the facts and adopting out-of-the-box thinking.

People with different backgrounds can change the image of what is considered normal within the social majority and generate a new way of thinking within a group.

In a study published in the American scientific journal Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 200 people were assigned to a mock jury of six people, all white or made up of four whites and two non-whites. Together they watched a video of a lawsuit with a black suspect and white victims. They then had to decide if the suspect was guilty.

It turned out that mixed juries were able to uncover more facts about the case and made fewer errors of fact in discussing the matter. If errors occurred, they were corrected in the same discussion. One possible explanation for this was that the mixed panels looked more closely at the evidence.

Another study shows similar results. In a series of experiments from Texas and Singapore, scientists allowed economically educated people to walk through a simulated supermarket and guess the price of products. The participants were divided into ethnically differentiated or homogeneous teams. People in the diverse group guessed prices 58 percent more often than participants in the other group.

Diversity teams remain more objective in different situations. By creating more diversity, it makes teams aware of their biases, which can blind them to essential information.

Personal Innovation Strategy

Diverse teams are more innovative, this is already a well-demonstrated reality.

To remain competitive, companies must find ways to cultivate innovation. Research shows that one of the best ways to transform yourself and your product is to embrace diversity within the company.

The gender diversity of 4,277 Spanish companies within the R&D teams was investigated. The teams with more women achieved a more radical renewal in two years than the teams with a male majority.

Another study suggests that cultural diversity is key to innovation. The researchers analyzed data from 7,615 companies that took part in the London Annual Business Survey, an investigation of company performance. Companies that saw cultural diversity at its highest developed more new products than those with similar CEOs. Rich, forward-thinking events and effective innovative thinking can become the new normal with smarter teams by better understanding innovation blind spots.

Bringing in people of different genders, races, ethnicities, orientations, backgrounds, and nationalities can boost a company’s ability to innovate. However, if it were that simple, it wouldn’t still be such a persistent problem. This is where personal innovation, especially in leadership development, is so valuable. Leaders must lead by example. Adopt a lifestyle of personal innovation that harnesses the pursuit of happiness to nurture the personal courage to step up to do the right thing more often.

Leveraging personally meaningful goals is key to personal innovation strategies that sidestep the most common problems with innovation capacity-building and diversity training programs. This means that there is no singular solution per se. Instead, it calls for cultivating the strategy to guide a lifestyle of inner growth, clarity, and wisdom.

Innovative new approaches to turning challenges into launching pads will help you become the kind of leader needed for today’s and tomorrow’s increasingly diverse workforce and markets. Stepping up is the key to discovering your personal innovation path. Art-based solutions based on imagination as a method allow people to become aware of their biases, discover what they are based on and learn to make better decisions. This will make leadership more successful no matter what the specific goals are. Simply put, smart leaders have to find new courage, wisdom, and inspiration to meet these current and emerging challenges.