Why too much diversity can be bad for creativity

Diversity in organisations has received considerable attention in the academic literature as well in the corporate area. Breakthrough innovation requires a wider knowledge base and organisations increasingly rely on multidisciplinary R&D teams to identify scientific developments that bridge gaps and reduce time to market. However, too much diversity can impose a bottleneck of information processing and dissemination by impeding and hampering creative and prompt decision making, leading to less-than-desirable solutions. This paper examines how diversity dimensions (gender, skills and education) interact to drive innovation and the potential divide in R&D teams from excessive demographic and informational heterogeneity. Additionally, we consider the potential mediation role of organisational capabilities to leverage diversity as a strategic resource to foster innovation. Our findings suggest that high diversity in gender or skills in cognitively diverse teams might be negative attributes to take into consideration. Significantly, results confirm the critical mediating role of organisational capabilities.