On 18 August 2021, Émile Servan-Schreiber shared a short masterclass on diversity produced by journalist Aïda Touihri for Balenciaga. He said he had contributed to the project and that versions were available in English and French. Touihri’s accompanying account placed the film at the intersection of personal experience, scientific research and the responsibilities of companies.
A preserved Kering page also describes a masterclass hosted by Touihri with five experts, linked to Balenciaga’s response to the death of George Floyd. The page places the discussion within the company’s educational response to racism and exclusion.
Five perspectives on diversity
Touihri’s contributor list makes the range of the discussion clear. Geneticist Lluis Quintana-Murci addressed what genes can tell us about humanity. Servan-Schreiber’s contribution connected diversity to collective intelligence. Pete Stone discussed inclusion; ESSEC professor Junko Takagi emphasised measuring diversity; historian François Durpaire considered the significance of George Floyd. Touihri’s account assigns each contributor a distinct part of the discussion.
Touihri explained that speaking from her own experience did not remove the difficulty of representing a subject with many dimensions. Her approach was to put several kinds of expertise alongside one another. That is itself a useful distinction: the genetic, historical, organisational and cognitive questions in the film do not have interchangeable answers.
What the forecasting connection means
For a precise account of prediction diversity, Scott E. Page’s 2007 paper offers a narrower mathematical statement. When numerical estimates are combined by taking their average, the squared error of the collective estimate equals the average individual squared error minus the spread of those estimates around their mean. The theorem explains why distinct estimates can improve an aggregate relative to average individual performance.
It does not establish that any demographically diverse group will outperform any expert on any task. Inclusion, measurement and the design of the work remain separate questions. The journal’s discussion of expertise and diversity explores that forecasting argument further. Touihri’s masterclass gave it a place within a broader conversation about diversity in human experience and working life.
