Diversity and difference are imperative for collaborative research

We know from experience that having a diverse group of people in a collaboration does not automatically yield a harmonious, cooperative team of researchers capable of exchanging relevant information and moving in the same problem- solving direction. As we’ve mentioned previously, diversity, in its varying forms, is simultaneously the core of a team's strength and a challenge to its successful functioning. The strengths derive from the very purpose of assembling an interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary, multicultural team – bringing multiple perspectives to bear on complex problems. People from different disciplines, backgrounds, and ethnic cultures will approach a problem differently. That is a given. What is not a given is whether they will succeed in achieving the best possible solution.

Let us first clarify that we are using the terms diversity and difference to refer both to the researchers’ disciplines and to their personal and cultural/ ethnic identities. When a team is being assembled the first question is some version of ‘who do we need on this team?’ where ‘who’ is shorthand for which disciplines need to be represented. Disciplinary diversity is what allows a research team to bring different conceptual frameworks, techniques, methods, and knowledge to attacking the research problem (Hong and Page, 2004). In addition to discipline, a researcher's personal identity – cultural and ethnic background, gender, demographics, lifestyle, and many other factors – shape the unique lenses that they bring to teams (Tang and Byrge, 2016).