Why Diversity and Inclusion Strengthen Business Networks and the Organizations Whose Data Flows through Them

Posted: 16th January 2025

Author: Joern Keller

In the technology industry, diversity and inclusion are all too often thought of as the province of human resources departments. Software engineering teams, by contrast, prefer applying their expertise to more practical, quantitative domains – such as data. Or so goes the thinking. But what if I told you that diversity and inclusion are integral rather than peripheral to data science and that without them, engineering would lose its most valuable insights?

When students of introductory statistics evaluate the relationship among variables to determine causality and predict outcomes for various hypotheses, they plot a regression model. Does precipitation, for example, spur demand for umbrellas? Or do they occur independently? Historical data can help both meteorologists and supply chain professionals to forecast accordingly. But what happens when rainfall increases and umbrella sales plummet simultaneously? It might suggest retailers have run out of stock. Or, if a hurricane is severe enough, it may indicate that residents have evacuated and stores shuttered, thus reducing umbrella sales to zero even though supplies remain plentiful. When data runs counter to expected patterns, the phenomenon is known as an outlier.

Outlier events may indicate someone simply made a typo. Or spilled coffee on a laptop. More often, however, outliers present the most important data points in any statistical analysis. They reveal valuable insights and opportunities for supply chain leaders to improve their operations, capitalize on emerging trends, manage risks and enhance forecasting accuracy. By integrating these insights into their operations and those of their trading partners, business leaders can make better-informed decisions and foster continuous improvement in their supply chain management practices.

To ignore outliers is to risk missing the warning signs of an oncoming storm threatening to wreak havoc on vital supply chains. Outliers point to the need for more data, richer context, greater understanding. Without outliers, data becomes routine. It tells us nothing new. Same widget, different day! Yet business-to-business commerce is never the same one day to the next. Its characteristic volatility traces the complex interplay of countless underlying links in the value chain. Achieving end-to-end visibility across these links among trading partners is paramount for any business to instill resilience and extend competitive advantage. To thrive, businesses must embrace outliers and act decisively on the insights they reveal across procurement, supply chain, logistics and asset collaboration.

Aided by the visibility of cloud-based business networks and AI-enabled applications, data can be coaxed to surrender its deepest secrets in the service of operational efficiency and cross-company collaboration. Yet for all the treasure buried within the zeroes and the ones, data represents only the second-most prized asset within an organization.

What’s the first?

Its people.

Here too, outliers prove instructive. Whether managing people or data, business leaders gain invaluable wisdom when they explore atypical patterns, examine unorthodox approaches, and encourage countervailing perspectives. When everyone on a team agrees with (or, worse, quietly acquiesces to) the dominant view, little is learned. Assumptions go untested. Only through the vigorous exchange of ideas – not unlike that of data – can organizations achieve their highest potential for growth.

This holds especially true in technology. As the 96th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birth draws near, we are wise to reflect on his example of lifting up the voices of diverse and historically underrepresented groups of people. But did you know that Dr. King was something of a tech enthusiast as well? In his remarks accepting the Nobel peace prize 60 years ago, King marveled at humanity’s “dazzling… technological progress” and “new and astonishing peaks of scientific success.” He even expressed awe at “machines that think.” Yet he also lamented “a sort of poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance.”

One of the greatest leaders of the twentieth century, Dr. King surrounded himself with advisers united in common purpose to uplift the human spirit. Yet they harbored sharply divergent opinions on how to do so, particularly when weighing matters of war and peace. That divergence of viewpoints – and the clash between them out of which higher truths emerge – was a strength upon which Dr. King drew inspiration throughout his public life. As we say in the software business, it was a feature rather than a bug.

Therein lies a lesson for us all. Diversity enriches every one of us when we welcome people of different backgrounds – race, religion, gender, national origin and so forth – to participate equally in the life of the organizations to which we lend our professional talents. But the benefits are every bit as profound when we encourage diversity of viewpoint in the workplace and create a culture of mutual respect and psychological safety within which the nonconformist ideas that give rise to tomorrow’s innovations are free at last.

 

Categories: News

Membership

IELA represents all educational settings, including independent and state schools, colleges and universities, charities, organisations, corporate companies and businesses in the UK and world-wide.

Find out more about Membership here.