Although we all entered new territory over the past 18 months, it’s not the first time the world has come together to overcome challenging periods in history. As part of our virtual ITV Showcase 2021 event,  journalist, thought-leader, and author, Matthew Syed, tells a story from the Second World War to explain why diversity of thought is vital for unlocking progress.

• In 1942, The Daily Telegraph hosted a crossword competition offering to donate £100 to charity if any of the 30 competitors could finish the crossword within 10 minutes. 

• Accountancy clerk Stanley Sedgwick was the outstanding performer on the day. 

• Although no one knew at the time, a member of the British Secret Intelligence Service was observing the competition. 

• A week later, Sedgwick joined legendary minds including Alan Turing at Bletchley Park to help crack the infamous Enigma code.

Matthew likens strong crossword solvers to “quasi-mind readers” as they can anticipate what’s coming up and arrive at the answers quickly. Ultimately, Sedgwick had a different mind to the likes of Turing and other mathematicians—and with that, he could offer alternative perspectives. 

“What Bletchley Park understood is that a team of Alan Turing’s would have been individually brilliant but they wouldn’t have the diversity to solve a multi-dimensional challenge like cracking the Enigma code,” he says. 

But Sedgwick wasn’t the one that was ‘different’. “More than half the people who worked there were women, there were brilliant cultural historians and linguists and ethnographers,” he says. 

Bletchley Park knew that diversity of thought was an asset, and would prove so much more powerful than filling the room with one kind of thinker. “This was a team precision-engineered to maximise the collective ingenuity of a human group and I think this is a pattern in the modern world,” he says. 

Echoing Bletchley Park, scientists across the world have joined forces in adversity to share ideas and speed up progress to fight the pandemic. Difference remains a powerful tool for solving complex challenges. 

And when it comes to the world of work, Matthew believes the greatest organisations are those that are capable of breaking out of echo chambers to embrace difference. “Diversity; it’s not just a politically correct box-ticking exercise, it is a cutting edge asset of the most innovative organisations,” he says.

As part of ITV Showcase 2021, Sharry Cramond, Marketing Director, M&S Food & Hospitality, joined a panel hosted by Adil Ray to discuss the themes shared by Matthew and fellow speakers. 

Like Matthew, she knows the value of building teams with genuine diversity of thought. “I often say to my team if we all thought the same, you’d only need one of us,” she says. “You have to have diversity of thought in your team because that’s what the customer base is like and we have to make sure that our teams are representing our customer base.” 

Former Financial Times columnist Heather McGregor CBE FRSE discusses how brands should prepare for the economic bounceback. 

Entrepreneur Deborah Meaden shares her three tips to help businesses thrive in 2021 and beyond.

Behavioural science consultant Richard Shotton explains how marketers can seize the “window of opportunity” now consumers are more open to change.

Christopher Kenna, CEO and Founder of diversity-driven marketing agency Brand Advance, shares his tips for building inclusive brands.

We’d love to speak to you about how we can help you achieve your goals in the months ahead. Drop us a line at itvcommercial@itv.com and we'll be in touch.

Matthew has a range of best-selling books on developing high performance. Matthew’s latest book ‘Rebel Ideas: The Power of Diverse Thinking’ offers a radical blueprint for creative problem-solving. It challenges hierarchies, encourages constructive dissent and forces us to think again about where the best ideas come from. In this bold and inspiring new book, Matthew argues that individual intelligence is no longer enough; that the only way to tackle these complex problems is to harness the power of our 'cognitive diversity'. Available to order now.