Now that you mention it, I think there's a real lack of grandmas in tech... maybe I shouldn't be saying this publicly, but we don't have any at our company.
One of our product managers is a grandmother (she is actually taking an early retirement soon because her 4th grandchild is on the way).
We are in the B2B/B2EDU space so the "As a grandmother, I think..." line of thought does not apply. However, she has frequently had insights and observations that none of us would have come up with. Once implemented, they have been very successful/profitable.
So yes, absolutely, unless your company wants to be in a very specific niche, the lack of true diversity in your company is a drag on your success.
PS - my grandfather had a tech job in Sunnyvale. He passed away last year at the age of 92. Point is - everyone alive has lived in a world with pervasive technology and computing. "They're old and can't understand this stuff" is pure BS.
> However, she has frequently had insights and observations that none of us would have come up with
> So yes, absolutely, unless your company wants to be in a very specific niche, the lack of true diversity in your company is a drag on your success.
The conclusion you are drawing here, does not follow from your two observations above. The fact that your product manager has had insights, that nobody else had in team, does not mean a "lack of true diversity in your company is a drag on your success." Some diversity may help in certain situations and in others not. The above mentioned insights and observations might just be the result of competence and more experience of the product manager or incompetence of the rest of the team. There may be many other reasons. We don't know. We have one observation and should refrain from generalizing. That this is because of more diversity is just a speculation. A speculation that fits an often repeated narrative, but that doesn't make it a logical conclusion.
