Review

Reviewed Work(s): The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups,
Firms, Schools, and Societies by Scott E. Page
Review by: Will Carrington Heath
Source: The Independent Review, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Summer 2008), pp. 123-126
Published by: Independent Institute
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24562183
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 Book Reviews * 123

"developing a new relationship with Israel"; "ending the Is

through a two-state solution"; and "transforming the lobby in
(pp. 336-37). They assess and largely reject remedies that speci
lobby, including: "weakening the lobby"; adopting policies
lobby's influence over elected officials and the policy-making
open discourse by encouraging academics and the media t
various arguments in order to correct enduring myths and ex
the lobby's policy preferences"; and passively hoping that the
positive direction, retaining its current influence, but adv
policies" (p. 349, emphasis in original).
The authors wax optimistic at this juncture because "the
[influenced by the Israel lobby] are now so apparent. . . . Alth
a powerful political force, its adverse impact is increasingly h
Unfortunately, prospects for meaningful change are disma
nize that all parties, including incumbents, "have too grea
system" (p. 349). Accordingly, they predict that "anyone w
election will lead to markedly different policies is likely to b
Indeed.

JAMES A. MONTANYE
Falls Church, Virginia

♦ The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better

Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies
By Scott E. Page
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007.
Pp. xx, 424. $27.95.

During World War II, the British brought together approximately twelve thousand
people at Bletchley Park, near London, to crack the German Enigma code, which they
did—not once, but twice. Francis Crick and James D. Watson discovered the mo
lecular structure of nucleic acid, the double helix, in 1953. And in 1962 Ringo Stan
joined three other young men from Liverpool, England, in a pop music group that
would become the most accomplished rock-n-roll band in history. What do all of
these events have in common?

In each case, diversity trumped ability. No one person would have cracked the
Enigma code even once, let alone twice. Could Crick have discovered the double helix
without Watson, or Watson without Crick? Most historians of science would say not.
The Beatles were certainly more than the sum of four moderately accomplished
musicians. You get the picture. In all of these examples, people succeeded not by

VOLUME XIII, NUMBER 1, SUMMER 2008

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124 * BOOK REVIEWS

being brilliantly capable individually, but by leveraging their dif

much more than they could have if they were acting alone.
How exactly does this amplification happen? What are its dyn
considers these questions in his fascinating book The Difference
nally to be "The Logic of Diversity," but Princeton University P
greater marketing appeal). This book combines analytical rigor,
edge, empirical evidence, and amusing anecdotes in a engaging st
heaviness of the "primary" academic literature on diversity.
If I may be permitted to pick one literary nit, I found tha
occasionally slips from clever to silly, like those Dummies' Gui
whatever) books, which are wonderful, but not necessarily owin
Unsophisticated humor does not play well alongside the otherwise so
elegant logic of The Difference. But I digress along very subjectiv
To move beyond anecdotes and formally argue that diversity tru
must say precisely what diversity means. (We must also define abilit
later.) Page defines diversity as differences in how we represent or
and problems (perspective diversity) and in how we generate sol
(heuristic diversity). A perspective is an internal language for repre
an encoding. Differences in perspective may reflect many factors re
and experience—even racial or ethnic influences, a subject to whi
The heuristic is a rule (or rules) one applies in searching for a solutio
essentially methodological, the ways in which persons go about
their "bag of tricks." Different heuristics imply different formal m
determined largely by one's training and education. The solution
pends on the interplay of perspective and heuristics—that is, on the
"perspective/heuristic pair."
The group collectively has an advantage over the single probl
many different perspective/heuristic pairs lead to the consideration
solutions. When one member of a problem-solving group gets "s
come at the problem from "a different angle" and push the gr
optimal solution. (Another Beatles hit is born.) The group's div
ability of any individual in it. Moreover—and this point is both coun
very significant—a diverse group of moderately capable problem
outperform a group composed entirely of experts. This diversity-tr
clusion is the major theme of The Difference.
This remarkable book is chock-full of insights and surprising
precisely for this reason it also runs the risk of being misinterprete
especially by those who read it through ideological lenses or, m
haps, read it too casually. For example, some readers might get t
Page is not playing fair with his assumptions, that he is "rigging
an egalitarian, antielitist agenda—specifically, that he deliberately

The Independent Review

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 Book Reviews ♦ 125

els with agents whose abilities are defined so as to guarantee

ability.
The attentive reader will appreciate, however, how carefully Page qualifies his
conclusions; in point of fact, he does not maintain that diversity always trumps ability.
There are two issues here, one logical and the other empirical. Page clearly explains
that the diversity-trumps-ability conclusion holds only if the problem is difficult—that
is, a problem for which no individual problem solver always locates the global optimum.
As a matter of logic, the "rigging-the-game" argument does no damage to the model
because it allows one to define ability so as to make the problem nondifficult. How
ever, as a matter of practicality, the extent to which diversity actually trumps ability is
an empirical question, which Page confronts head on.
Throughout the book, Page offers anecdotal evidence of diversity's value, but in
a chapter aptly titled "The Empirical Evidence" he reviews more systematically the
academic research into the effects of diversity. The literature is voluminous, and he
presents a fair and balanced overview. The evidence essentially shows that diversity
does bring expected benefits, but not always and not always very strongly when it
does. Diversity's power depends in part on the situation. If we look exclusively at firms
that innovate, we do find returns from diversity, but there is no evidence and no
reason to expect that diversity behind the counter at Burger King leads to a better way
to slice onions or spread ketchup. Page concludes, fairly I believe, that the benefits of
diversity are real in no small number of situations and that they are worth pursuing
within a reasonable cost-versus-benefit framework.

Does Page advocate the "diversity" of political correctness? Here again, the
casual or the ideological reader might be given to false inference. As usual, Page treats
the issue with caution, fairness, and a much needed dose of clear thinking.
Diversity in the context of political correctness means different things to differ
ent people, of course, but those who equate diversity with feel-good notions of
inclusiveness and sensitivity or "payback" affirmative-action policies should pay special
attention to Page's discussion of identity diversity, which refers to differences related
to the racial, cultural, religious, gender, and other "identities" into which we sort
ourselves (and each other). This type of diversity is not, strictly speaking, the sort of
cognitive diversity formally modeled in the logic of diversity. Page carefully points out
that for identity diversity to operate positively in his analysis, it must correlate with
cognitive diversity. Whether identity diversity thus results in better group perfor
mance is another one of those empirical questions. Across many studies, the evidence
is that on average the performance of identity-diverse groups and that of homoge
neous groups is roughly the same. However, studies also show that in situations where
creativity and innovation are especially important, identity-diverse groups do often
excel.

But the ledger has two sides, and there must be offsetting entries in the negative
column if average performance turns out to be no better for identity-diverse groups.
Identity diversity sometimes leads to problems with group dynamics to the detriment

VOLUME XIII, NUMBER 1, SUMMER 2008

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126 ♦ BOOK REVIEWS

of group performance. Studies have shown that mixing identity

uncooperative behavior, communication problems, and other un
quences that swamp any gains owing to cognitive diversity.
This is not to say that affirmative-action policies designed to enc
are necessarily undesirable. Page certainly draws no such conclusion;
to come down on the other side: "[W]e just haven't figured out ho
and when we do, diversity improves performance. We just have to g
and learn to ride" (p. 328). Cognitive diversity is presumably the
magic unencumbered by racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, and all the o
undermine the cooperative enterprise. A modicum of empirical suppo
optimistic presumption. Nevertheless, one wonders if learning to
eventually losing also the cognitive differences we wish to exploit.
The Difference explores such a variety of topics (as its title sugges
many marvelous insights that I cannot possibly do justice to all
despite its breadth, the author commits one serious sin of omi
develop the implications of "diversity trumps ability" in the context
capitalism versus socialism, free markets versus central planning, F.
Oscar Lange. In a previous issue of this journal, I explore th
Revisited: Diversity, Planning, and the Vox Populi," Independent
[summer 2007]: 47-70). The thrust of my argument is that div
formal support to Hayek's less formal, but enormously incisive discu
of knowledge, the efficiency of markets, and the deficiencies inh
central planning. The market's diversity trumps the planner's ability
that this thesis is my own, and it does not necessarily reflect the ec
opinions that Page himself may hold.
The Difference is a very good book. I recommend it to all in
especially to those who have not gone beyond the "diversity" of poli
As Bill Miller says on the book's dust jacket, "[I]f you haven't re
talking metaphor." Read this book.

WILL CARRINGTON HEATH

University of Louisiana at Lafayette

♦ Globalization and Its Enemies

By Daniel Cohen
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006.
Pp. 256. $27.95 cloth.

In Globalization and Its Enemies, Daniel Cohen deals with an important and tim
topic, but he does so inadequately. The title leads one to believe that Cohen w
defend globalization against its enemies or identify those enemies and describe t

The Independent Review

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