This is one of the arguments given, and it makes a whole lot of sense, so much so, it's hard to negate. But in my years of business experience, I don't believe it's true.

Having Engineers of 'XYZ Heritage' will not really in any way help you 'think differently' vis-a-vis the XYZ market. It just doesn't work that way.

Now - having Engineers 'born and raised' in a certain part of the world - yes, that can possibly make a difference. It's no surprise that Vancouver has a lot of 'ties' to APAC.

Paradoxically, when you start a business, generally you want to hit the very narrow segment of your best possible followers, in which case, diversity may be the opposite of important: you want to nail a demo, that may or may not be related to diversity.

The primary advantage, I believe, of diversity, actually has nothing to do with diversity. I have mostly come to believe that most of it doesn't matter materially - what matters - is that companies and individuals have an opportunity to connect with one another. A young, white, CEO may simply be unwilling to look beyond his network and local horizons to find, for example, a lot of women. It's the issue of gender that will help the company, rather massive talent pools overlooked.

So having internal biases agains 'certain types' results in just missing out on talent, not so much on some 'special thing' that those candidates bring. Mostly.