c is the magic letter

Lumosity, a startup with more than 40 science-inspired web and mobile games for exercising the brain, has surpassed 11 million members in 190 countries and saw 400% growth in 2010. The startup credits a mixture of factors including mobile adoption, user recommendations and product enhancements for its huge bump in members.

“Mainly, though, there’s been growth in the general awareness that you can actually affect the performance of your brain,” says co-founder and Chief Science Officer Mike Scanlan.

I started using Lumosity brain training games a few years ago. It is a great tool. Of course I haven’t used it that much in the last year or so. I should probably pick it back up again.

“What kind of environment creates good ideas? The simplest way to answer it is this: innovative environments are better at helping their inhabitants explore the adjacent possible, because they expose a wide and diverse sample of spare parts - mechanical or conceptual - and they encourage novel ways of recombining those parts.” - Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation

collaboration |kəˌlabəˈrā sh ən|

noun

the action of working with someone to produce or create something :

Working together shouldn’t be as difficult as it is sometimes. Yet, there are collaborations that happen everyday. In my studies on collaboration I have found that artists particularly musicians are mentioned as being great collaborators. Maybe musicians are quick to work together because they have found the value in it. 

I have found that social sector collaborations are far more rare. Yet, it is imperative that organizations work together to create sustained and systemic impact on complex social problems. In the social sector there is a silo mentality and duplication of effort that is all to familiar. This stems from a lack of resources and inability to find a common vision. It leads to a competitive culture, not a culture of collaboration. My hope is that social sector organizations can find the same value that musicians have found in collaborating. Hopefully, when organizations experience the value of collaboration they will do it more and more and this will lead to social innovation. 

Today I was having lunch with a friend of mine and we began to discuss diversity and the need for it in the environment. He was explaining to me that monocultures are not good for environmental sustainability or life in general, but that biodiversity is one of the most important things to our future existence. 

This got me thinking about diversity in a social and community context. Just as in the environment, monocultures are detrimental to the progress and sustainability of life. This is what the theory of groupthink is based on; groupthink causes groups to not test ideas, to not look for outside input, and eventually make faulty decisions. Diversity is key to breaking the silo-mentality that results from monocultures. 

Diversity is also key to the creative process within organizations and businesses. The diversity of skills, backgrounds, cultures, sex, ethnicity, political and religious views is a catalyst for create thought. Ideas need to be bounced off of people with different points of view. This only causes a novel idea to develop and grow. 

These are a few reasons I feel like diversity is important. Why do you feel diversity is important?