The Multicultural Mind:

Unleashing the Hidden Force for Innovation in your Organization

By David C. Thomas

“Thomas has the ability to communicate complex and sophisticated ideas in a compelling, practical, and accessible way. He provides leaders with the practical evidence-based guidance they need to leverage the unique skills of multiculturals in the service of innovation. This book is a source of rich insights, and I would encourage all business leaders looking to maximize innovation through diversity to utilize its insights to drive performance in their organizations.”

—Lisa Annese, CEO, Diversity Council Australia

Globalization has created a superheated competitive business environment that demands innovation to stay ahead. But it’s also created a hidden source of innovation right in your midst: the people in your organization who have deep experience in more than one culture—multiculturals. Having to integrate different cultural frameworks has enabled them to develop abilities that can contribute powerfully to building innovative organizations.
In The Multicultural Mind: Unleashing the Hidden Force for Innovation in your Organization ($24.95, 176 pages, 6" x 9", ISBN 978-1-62656-101-4), releasing January 2016 by Berrett-Koehler Publishers, author David C. Thomas looks at how to establish the organizational conditions under which multiculturals can flourish and shows how even the most monocultural among us can gain the advantages of a multicultural mind.
Thomas cites extensive research and examples showing that multiculturals—people who have deep experience in more than one culture—have developed skills and abilities that organizations can leverage in the service of innovation. They have a broader worldview. Having to integrate different cultural values has forced them to develop more complex ways of thinking and makes them better able to see new patterns and connections. Their heightened empathy, the result of learning to adapt to sometimes wildly different locations, customs, and beliefs, helps them build support for their ideas and work effectively on the teams that implement those ideas.
This book makes a powerful business case for recognizing and cultivating a new dimension of diversity—the diversity within individuals!

David C. Thomas is the Beedie Professor of International Management at Simon Fraser University. He is the author or coauthor of ten books, including the award-winning Cross-Cultural Management.

Publication date: January 2016, $24.95, 176 pages, 6" x 9", ISBN 9781626561014