For most companies it probably doesn't matter, but if you're trying to market a product to a diverse group, it'll help to have diverse input when creating the product. An example is facial recognition software developed by a US company not recognizing black people, or cameras saying "woops, looks like someone blinked" after taking pictures of an asian person. If they had a more diverse development or testing team, they probably would have noticed it before being publicly embarrased.
I wonder if those studies got correlation vs causation correctly. Maybe well-doing companies have more satellite offices. Or particular cities have become magnets for people to come do business and have good ecosystem for kickstarting their growth.
:) You may be underestimating the average intelligence of a HackerNews reader.
I am well aware of why some people think diversity is good. Many things are good. Few things are critical.
I'll make a strong claim - there is no evidence, that diversity is critical for the success of any business, on this planet.
It's an easy claim to make because diversity is not a well defined scientific term, hence there can be no evidence. Which was my point - we can hand wave about diversity, inclusivity and all kinds of things - let's just not pretend it's anything but empty hand waving.
Before anyone comes back with saying I'm cherry picking one sentence out of an entire article - it is the foundation of this entire diversity movement. If we agree that we don't know whether diversity is important, we can begin to focus on things that people actually care about - like standards of living and wages.