Innovation and Gender Diversity in Research Teams

We have noticed in Apollo that this is largely a story of white guys (although we will talk more about this on Wednesday).  At the same time we will talk about how the diversity of their backgrounds was important in how they conceived of the program.  We will see in the weeks to come that Steven Johnson in his book Where Good Ideas Come From argues that innovation comes when people from different backgrounds connect their ideas.  A recent study looking at the medical field has claimed that gender diverse research teams produce “more novel and higher impact ideas.”  This study examined 6.6 million papers in medical research published since 2000.  (I am not completely sure how they judged novelty.). The claim the study makes is that gender diversity in research teams  has increased greatly over the period studied and that on average the more research teams tended towards a 50/50 gender split, the more innovative their research was.