And perhaps a good way to make the point conceptually, is to imagine you are putting together a group of 10 people in a team to come up with creative ideas—to do the next big thing in your business or organization.

And let's also assume that this is a talented group of people, each of whom comes up with 10 genuinely useful ideas.

So, 10 people in the team, each of whom is coming up with 10 useful ideas; How many useful ideas do you have in total?

This is a slightly trick question, cos you think, one would think 100…. 10 people, 10 ideas each.

But if they're cognitively homogenous—if they think in the same way—and they come up with the same 10 ideas, you only have 10 overall!

If on the other hand, they are cognitively diverse and come up with different ideas from one other, you could have 100 useful ideas.

In the space of innovation, which is gonna dominate the future of our economy, our political institutions, and more, engineering cognitive diversity, relative to the context, you get this massive uplift in what I call collective intelligence.

And the tragedy is two things.

One a psychological point: we are attracted unconsciously to people who think like us.

When people are mirroring our perspective back to us, it makes us feel smarter, it validates our world view.

The pleasure centers of our brains light up in brain scanners when people are telling us things we already suspect or believe, or confirm our prejudices.

And can you see the problem?

When it's a simple task, that's fine. Any one person has the solution—you surround yourself with like-minded others, you are able to deliver the solution.

But as the complexity increases, and no one brain is sufficient to solve the problem, when you are attracted to people who think in the same way, you're getting no uplift at all in collective intelligence.

And by mirroring each other's perspectives, you become more confident about a solution that might be gravely mistaken.

This is why cognitive diversity is so important, and I believe it will become the key feature of competitive advantage for the next 50 years.

But here's another thing: it's not just a psychological problem, it's a conceptual one.

Whilst researching the book I talked to one of the most eminent economic forecasters in the world, and he said if I truly believe that my model is the best one out there, then, by definition, I should be working with people who think like me.

That logic is extremely compelling—it is also spectacularly wrong.