That's the question that we (myself, Roger Mayer of NC State and Jing Zhao at Portland State) recently studied in a paper that's forthcoming in the finance journal: Financial Management.
The answer is YES. We found that firms that promote diversity have more new products, more patents and more influential patents.
You can read the paper here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/fima.12205/full
Here's the summary on the NC State news page. https://news.ncsu.edu/2018/01/diversity-boosts-innovation-2018/
And here's a nice write up on WUNC radio's website, together with some additional links that talk about the benefit of diversity in teams. http://wunc.org/post/study-diverse-companies-are-more-innovative
