Insiders, Outsiders, & Immigrants

A report on the role of immigrants in US hi-tech startups released yesterday is generating a lot of buzz around the world because the researchers found that more than half of the Silicon Valley start-ups over the last decade included at least one immigrant among their founders. This gives strong ammunition to those who want to remove restrictions on high-tech immigration in the restrictive world of post-9/11 USA, and it also makes for interesting speculation among those, like ourselves, who study innovation.

One of the keys to innovation is the ability to combine insider and outsider perspectives, to see as an outsider what others miss, and to know as an insider why it's relevant. Highly educated immigrants are often in the unique position of being able to do that. This concept is nicely expressed in the words of Theodore Levitt: "The future belongs to people who possibilities before they become obvious." (And ironically, this was the sentiment in a New Year's greeting email I received today from a manager in India...)

Immigrants also have an advantage in that they become deeply embedded in different cultures, their native one and their adopted one. The bi-cultural perspective helps them to see what others may have missed because they're deeply immersed in only one viewpoint.

For those in pursuit of innovation, many of the lessons of this study are consistent with what we know about managing the search for novelty: diversity matters - a lot, as does education. You often must know a field fully to see its boundaries, and you have to see differently to see beyond them.