The importance of diversity
In an ever competitive market and never ending strong customer expectation for excellent products and services, it is time for all companies to embrace diversity at work and understand the power it generates. Different background and experiences makes people solve problems differently and look at them with a different perspective. When it comes to solving and innovating, a diverse company would be empowered with different attack angles for each problem or hurdle it faces.
Chess
Chess is a very popular strategic game that have been played and studied over centuries. It consists mainly of a board with a 64 squares and 32 pieces, 16 on each side. There are 6 different types of chess pieces:
- King
- Queen
- Rook
- Bishop
- Knight
- Pawn
Movement
Each piece type moves differently and all must have vacant squares except the knight which can jump over some other pieces.
- The rook moves in a straight line. It also takes part, along with the king, in a special move called castling. Mainly protecting the King and moving towards the center.
- The bishop moves diagonally.
- The queen moves in a straight lines or diagonally.
- The king moves in a straight lines or diagonally but only one square at a time.
- The knight moves in an L shaped pattern.
- The pawn moves forward exactly one square, or optionally, two squares when on its starting square, toward the opponent’s side of the board.
Points
In term of analyzing a game or writing a chess engine, a standard valuation has been proposed as seen in the figure below. For sure it is more complicated than that and these values change dynamically according to their position in the game.
The number of pieces is minimal but the number of combinations possible from a certain initial layout is enormous.
Mapping the chess world to the enterprise world
For the context of this article we would like to imagine the board as the environment in which the company operates and the type of pieces as different types of people within the company. We could have the following mapping.
- Board → Environment in which the company operates
- King → CEO
- Queen → CTO
- Rook → Leadership Position
- Bishop → Senior Position (Out of the box thinker)
- Knight → Senior Position (Ability to jump hurdles)
- Pawn → Junior Position
Analyzing the power of diversity through a Chess competition
It a very interesting to look at the outcome of a chess competition where on one side of the board, we would have a diverse set of pieces and on the other different types with less diversity.
Scenario
Let us have a scenario where on one side there is mainly rooks and on the other side the standard set of pieces and see which side wins the game.
Initial layout
In this initial layout, the black would have a point advantage but will it lead to a win towards the end of the game?
We let a powerful chess engine play against himself and sees what will happen.
Middle Game
End Game
We can see the outcome. The most diverse team won the game.
Another round …
Initial position
Middle Game
You do not need to be a good chess player to see that there is a positional advantage of white over black in the middle of the game.
Final Game
Lichess
Lichess is a free and open-source Internet chess server run by a non-profit organization of the same name. Anyone can play online chess anonymously, although players may register an account on the site to play rated games. Lichess is ad-free and all the features are available for free, as the site is funded by donations from patrons.
This analysis was done using Lichess and the previous game can be completely analyzed and watched again by importing this information.
[Variant “From Position”]
[FEN “rrrrkrrr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq — 0 1”]
1. d4 e6 2. c4 f6 3. Nc3 Kf7 4. e4 h5
5. Bd3 c5 6. Nge2 cxd4 7. Nxd4 g5 8. e5 fxe5
9. Nf3 Rg7 10. Nxe5+ Kg8 11. Ng6 Rxg6 12. Bxg6 Rxc4
13. Bxg5 Rbc8 14. O-O R8c5 15. Qd2 h4 16. Qe3 Rff5
17. Bxd8 Rxd8 18. Ne4 Rxe4 19. Qxe4 Rfe5 20. Qxb7 Rh6
21. Be4 a5 22. Rad1 Rhh5 23. f4 Red5 24. Qb3 Rf8
25. Bxd5 Rhxd5 26. Rde1 Rh5 27. Re3 Rcf5 28. Qc4 Kg7
29. Qd4+ e5 30. Qxd7+ R8f7 31. Qd1 Rh6 32. Qg4+ Rg6
33. Qxh4 R7f6 34. Rc1 Rxf4 35. Qh5 R4f5 36. Rc7+ Kf8
37. Qh8+ Rg8 38. Rc8+ Ke7 39. Qh7+ Rf7 40. Rc7+ Kf8
41. Qh6+ Rgg7 42. Qd6+ Kg8 43. Rc8+ Rf8 44. Qe6+ Rff7
45. Rxf8+ Kxf8 46. Qc8+ Ke7 47. Rxe5+ Kd6 48. Qc5+ Kd7
49. Rd5+ Ke8 50. Qc8+ Ke7 51. Qd7+ Kf8 52. Qd8#
