MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Use Digital Platforms to Cultivate Diversity

Leaders can foster stronger collaboration by using digital platforms to increase employee diversity.

When one thinks of a successful digital transformation, employee diversity doesn’t immediately come to mind as an essential component. Yet, to compete in an increasingly digital environment, a diverse employee base can not only help provide new ideas but can also help reveal key decision-making errors that may otherwise go unnoticed.

Diversity is particularly important for collaboration, a critical factor associated with digital business maturity. Our research shows that while only about 30% of employees from companies at an early stage of digital development say that their company is collaborative, more than 70% of employees from digitally mature companies do. Nevertheless, collaboration simply for the sake of collaboration is not necessarily valuable.

About the Author

Gerald C. (Jerry) Kane is a professor of information systems at the Carroll School of Management at Boston College and the MIT Sloan Management Review guest editor for the Digital Business Initiative. He can be reached at gerald.kane@bc.edu and on Twitter @profkane.

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