Diversity the Key to Winning $1 Million Netflix Software Development Contest

The New York Times reported that the biggest winner in  Netflix’s contest offering a $1 million prize to anyone who could most improve its movie recommendation system was diversity. The two top teams, which were virtually tied in a dead heat until BellKors Pragmatic Chaos was declared the winner in September, agree that the formula for creating a successful predictive model was not a single insight or algorithm, but bringing together diverse people with complementary skills and combining their different methods of problem-solving.

“The contest was almost a race to agglomerate as many teams as possible,” said David Weiss, a Ph.D. candidate in computer science at the University of Pennsylvania. “The surprise was that the collaborative approach works so well, that trying all the algorithms, coding them up and putting them together far exceeded our expectations.”

Many heads lead to better innovations than one. Especially if they all perceive the world differently.

 Print This Post   Email This Post