Expert on improving collective performance
and decision making through diversity.


Highlights

Scott Page researches how diversity improves performance and decision making, when ‘diversity’ means what we look like on the outside, rather than what we look like within—the tools and abilities that make each of us unique. Scott’s key insight:

Groups made up of intelligent people who are inwardly diverse—that is, who have different perspectives, mindsets and ways of solving problems—can make more accurate predictions and solve problems more effectively than groups of ‘experts.’

He is the author of The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies, about how we think in groups and why collective wisdom works.

Scott also studies complex systems. He is the author of Complex Adaptive Systems and is on the external faculty of the Santa Fe Institute, the world-renowned research center dedicated to using complexity science to solve human problems.

Scott Page is director of the Center for the Study of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan where he serves as Leonid Hurwicz Collegiate Professor of Complex Systems, Economics, and Political Science. This spring he will be featured in a special video by The Teaching Company on the Art of Teaching as one of America's great teachers. His new book, Diversity and Complexity is scheduled for a fall release.

He consults with corporations and nonprofits on market performance and organizational performance.

The Difference

Why can teams of people find better solutions than brilliant individuals working alone? And why are the best group decisions and predictions those that draw upon the very qualities that make each of us unique? The answers lie in diversity—not what we look like outside, but what we look like within, our distinct tools and abilities. In his book The Difference, Scott Page explains how to use diversity to improve an organization’s predictions, decisions and problem-solving capabilities.

Moving beyond the politics that cloud standard debates about diversity, Scott discusses why difference beats out homogeneity, whether you're talking about citizens in a democracy or scientists in the laboratory, and why diversity trumps ability. He examines practical ways to apply diversity's logic to a host of problems, and along the way offers surprising examples, from the redesign of the Chicago "El" to the truth about where we store our ketchup.

The book links to smart mobs, wise crowds, identity diversity, globalization, and interdisciplinary science. . . The same logic that shows how cognitive diversity improves the performance of a predictive market can show how including identity diverse—and experientially and vocationally diverse—people improves the performance of a problem-solving team.

Eclectic Research

A popular teacher and speaker, Scott studies how social, political and economic systems work. He has published articles on an unusually wide range of topics, from public good provision, electoral competition, segregation, and city formation to culture, standing ovations, chain stores, exurban sprawl, and the benefits of diversity.

Credentials

• Professor of complex systems, political science and economics, University of Michigan
• Author, The Difference, Complex Adaptive Systems and Diversity in Complex Systems
• External faculty member, Santa Fe Institute
• Senior research scientist, Institute for Social Research, U of Michigan
• Associate director, Center for the Study of Complex Systems, U of Michigan
• Fellow, Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Sciences