The New Wave of Diversity: Minds

In the '30s, Technicolor revolutionized the film industry by introducing vibrant and incredibly realistic colors to a field previously dominated by black and white films. Before Technicolor, early attempts at color in films were limited to hand-painting, tinting, or using two-color systems that provided a limited palette.  

I heard this story I just told, about movies, techniques, and changes a few days ago and I thought to myself: "What a beautiful wor(l)d! This mirrors my journey through cognitive diversity''. Over a decade of teaching large groups has taught me that genuine understanding of a concept comes from being able to effectively communicate it to many people. Eager to dare such a challenge, I've been counting the colored lenses I've metaphorically received, and I've created, a mini-series called "Diversity in Minds: The New Wave".   

I will be sharing a series of 7 articles in the coming future. While they won't encapsulate the entire course material, they will focus on the most astonishing and ''wow'' ideas on cognitive diversity that I've explored at IE Business School Madrid. I'm excited to share these insights with you.

But for now, what is ''cognitive diversity''? The short answer is:  everything that is chaos, through structuring and patterns, becomes harmony and diversity.

To explain this, imagine that you are shoe shopping and you wear size 39. You enter a shop, you mention "39," and you find a shoe that fits perfectly, right? Think about how much time and overwhelming choices this saves, compared to if every shoe was numerated in one size or shoe sizes didn’t exist. 

This is great! But here's a question: Does wearing size 39 shoes affect your life beyond the experience of shoe shopping? Do people expect you to behave differently because of your shoe size? Do the size 39 shoe people do things that size 41 shoe people never should do? 

Of course not. And this is what we call an equally neutral category. And in recent years there has been talk of a different kind of inclusion and categorization, not according to social ephemeral constructs, but according to some objective realities and to some neutral categories. And among the many that are out there, one will be mentioned here: the type of cognition you have. And why this kind of diversity become important?

 Because, the currency of the recent years - and hopefully of those to come -  has been:  The (human) Mind.