Towards the end of my tenure at Apple, I was examining learning as my
colleague and I were interested in designing 'a learning processor.' When
the time came for me to leave Apple Computer in 1990, I founded the Mithya
Institute for Learning and Knowledge Architecture to continue my research
on collective and organizational learning, design organizations that learn
and to assist the co-evolution of human beings and technology.
About my institute: The Mithya Institute studies and works at the
interface of information (technology and knowledge architecture) and
transformation (learning that leads to wisdom). Our mission is to research
and apply innovative approaches to collective learning, innovation and
creation of new knowledge, leadership and technology design. Our vision is
to ignite the natural genius in people, evoke passion for what one does
and to build sustainable learning organizations that thrive during these
days of accelerating change.
I am currently spending 3 months a year in India and 9 months in USA every
year. Ford, Boeing, Xerox, Majesco Software are some of my clients in the
USA whereas Mastek, Samtel Group, Eicher Group, National Dairy Development
Board are my clients in India.
I am being asked by a client to develop something very interesting and
thought I should open up the topic for discussion and suggestions from
this elite group.
What is the value of diversity? How do you measure it and how do you
develop metrics for it? While I have been very reluctant to take up this
project as I believe that diversity has a 'tacit' dimension that is not
measurable I am being challenged to think of ways to make that 'tacit'
knowledge explicit. I think it is worth looking at. Initial calls to
Diversity managers in 5-6 companies in the USA leads me to believe that
this will be of much interest to many of them. They are also struggling to
put a value while everybody knows that innovation, out of box thinking,
different perspectives, different worldviews and time it takes to solve
problems and the scope of solutions do increase exponentially when
diversity is present in the team, can we find a way to measure 'diversity
capital' to the organization if I might call it? You can send me e-mail
(PKaipa@aol.com) or we could discuss it in this forum and I will be happy
to post my summary at the end.
Thanks for allowing me to raise this question to you and to be part of
your forum,
Prasad Kaipa
(408) 866-8511
Pkaipa@aol.com
--Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>