In Brief

The Problem

Many people with neurological conditions such as autism spectrum disorder, dyspraxia, and dyslexia have extraordinary skills, including in pattern recognition, memory, and mathematics. But the neurodiverse population remains largely untapped.

The Cause

Conventional recruitment and career-development methods (for example, job interviews) and the belief that scalable work processes require absolute conformity to standardized approaches screen out neurodiverse people who could be valuable employees.

The Solution

A growing number of companies—among them SAP, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Microsoft, Willis Towers Watson, and EY—have reformed HR practices to capitalize on the talents of neurodiverse people. In the process, they are becoming better able to fully leverage the skills of all workers.

Meet John. He’s a wizard at data analytics. His combination of mathematical ability and software development skill is highly unusual. His CV features two master’s degrees, both with honors. An obvious guy for a tech company to scoop up, right?

A version of this article appeared in the May–June 2017 issue (pp.96–103) of Harvard Business Review.