So let's just recap on the big idea: to fast-track breakthrough, innovative ideas, companies are best to assemble a bunch of diverse people and let them loose on a project?

Yes. Research shows that the best way to get breakthrough ideas is to have lots of ideas-you know, for every great idea you need nine ordinary ones. Now research by Harvard University has also shown that diverse teams outperform homogeneous teams in problem solving and idea generation. I've been part of these exercises myself.

When you are in a homogeneous team, with people of similar age, race and background, you make fast progress at solving problems. The multi-ethnic, multi-disciplinary, multi-gender team takes much longer to get established, primarily because of language difficulties, but it eventually overtakes the homogeneous team in the number and the quality of innovations.

But just throwing the diverse team together is not it, right? There's some kind of process to create these 'intersections' that you talk about.

A diverse team takes time to perform to its potential. It's incredibly frustrating, so you do need a few things to avoid moving into chaos. First there's the language. Just because everybody is speaking English may not mean they're communicating with each other. The quantum lab at Hewlett Packard is a good example. They had put together people from all kinds of different backgrounds and generated tons of patents because of that. But it took them two years to get anything done. Partly it was due to simple language difficulties, so they developed their own dictionary to help define what this particular group meant by these particular words. The other thing they developed was a leader, who was less a leader in the usual sense than a listener or interpreter or catalyst.

"Just because everybody is speaking English may not mean they're communicating with each other"

So there's a direction to the discussion?

Yes and no. Structure's important, but you can limit idea generation with too much structure. You've got to be aware that when you come up with an idea, it seems to be sort of mandate-forming. You must not forget about that idea, so you can revisit it. In fact, I would argue that the ideas with the greatest ability to break new ground tend to come about exactly that way. You're solving one particular problem and then in the course of that you come up with something else. And, actually, you dare to drop the thing that you're working on to pursue that new thing.

Do you see a role for the Third World?

Yes, as a source of inspiration for new ideas. I was asked once what would you do if you wanted to create a new dishwasher-where would you get your ideas from? I said there are all kinds of different ways of doing it. For instance, you could bring in a fashion photographer to try to design the dishwasher. Or you could try to design a dishwasher that you could sell in Sudan. You've probably come up with a dishwasher that is inexpensive and has uses very little energy and water.

I think we've already done that with the Fisher & Paykel DishDrawer-a dishwasher crossed with a set of drawers.

That's great, that's phenomenal.

Does your advice apply to small enterprises too?

Yes, all these teams in the Harvard study were tiny, so you're talking about four or five people. It's easier for small companies because they typically don't have to meet quarterly earnings targets. If the only thing you care about is that something is met by the 30th of a particular month, I'm sorry, you're just going fail at innovation. At Google they give 20 percent of the working week back to people to do whatever they want.

It's the 3M model as well isn't it?

At 3M, they give ten to 15 percent, but at Google it's a whole day. There's a difference when you try to squeeze in half a day on Friday.

Tell me about this management fund that you're launching. You're using diversity as a predictor of financial success?

There's a limit as to how much I can say about it, because of Security and Exchange Commission rules. So the only thing I can really say is that it is a fund targeting companies that do diversity well. In theory, these companies will be more innovative and more profitable. And diversity here is defined as things like women or minorities on the board or in top management. Did you know that when women are on boards companies perform better? That's from a Swedish study.

Richard Florida uses creative people as an index for predicting economic growth.

Yes-he has the gay index, the technology index and the activity index. It's similar but I prefer to look at the company level.

Do you see any crossover with the whole user-generated, Generation C, crowd-sourcing thing?

Massive crossover. Because you're increasing the level of diversity. But there are traps with this approach, one being that the user knows what is needed. This might be so but as individuals they get their insights in an incremental fashion. The trick is to capture the power of the group to spark off each other to create radical innovations.