Curate the table so the doctor, the CEO, and the street magician all sit down together.
technique — attributed to Paul Bulencea & Claus Raasted
If you get together fifty doctors, you have an interesting meeting. If you put a doctor next to a CEO next to a street magician, you have something that does not happen anywhere else. The College curates each cohort for diversity of profession, background, religion, ethnicity, age, and pursuit. The curation is the product. It is also the part that requires the most active work, because without it, participants self-segregate by background and the cross-pollination that justifies the format never happens. The team also team-builds intentionally, because curation alone is not enough to overcome the human instinct to dismiss people who do not look like you.
For program designers running cohort-based experiences. The technique requires explicit allocation rules and the willingness to turn away applicants who would fit too easily with the existing mix.
curation, diversity, cohort-design, cross-pollination