Putting aside the mandate of equal opportunities in the workplace for a moment, recruiting more women makes good business sense. A decade of study by some of the world’s most prestigious think tanks – Carnegie Mellon, London School of Business, Columbia University – shows that recruiting women into critical positions has quantifiable benefits. However, many CEOs and other business executives are barely aware of these findings. They reside primarily in academic papers that these busy decision-makers often have little time to read.

The Anita Borg Institute (ABI) has compiled many recent academic papers’ findings into a concise format that will provide these busy executives with the information they need to develop their organizations.

• A Carnegie Mellon economist, Professor Anita Woolley, found that teams with at least one female member proved to have a higher IQ collectively than teams comprised of all males.
• (NCWIT) National Center for Women & Information Technology investigated IT patents for women’s participation and discovered that US patents developed by mixed-gender teams were cited 30 percent to 40% more than equivalent patents.
• In a survey of 1,500 US companies in the S&P, Dezso and Ross discovered that companies with female representation in top management had more extraordinary financial results when creativity was a central factor in their strategy.
• Fortune 500 companies with at least three females in the director’s position saw their invested capital returns jump by 66%, their equity returns increase by 53%, and their sales returns boosted by 42%.
• A Gallup poll found that companies with more diversity, including more female members, had a turnover rate that was 22% lower and an easier time recruiting their talent.

The key takeaway for companies who wish to succeed in these global times is this: 

This business strategy makes sense. Suppose a team comprises those who come from the same type of background regarding education, life experience, and other factors. In that case, the chances are that any solutions on the table will be similarly homogenous.