Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)

Post by jqm » Fri, Mar 21, 2014, 6:35 PM UTC

jqm wrote: post #260

The modern business world is full of people like the author. People who are asleep. People who are not actually alive. People who are threatened by those who think. These people hate the thinker, but their dreary little lives rest directly on the foundation that the thinkers provide. For example, the radical who first looked at fire and thought, "hey, maybe I could use that".... now THAT GUY was a visionary who puts…

Post by contulluipeste » Fri, Mar 21, 2014, 6:49 PM UTC

espeed wrote: post #219

nnq wrote: post #198

It's sad how this sounds so plausible and valid... because even today, we are incredibly bad at managing (or making use of or integrating into a team...) brilliant people and we fail to make use of them and we let them fail because we can only figure out how to make reliable profit by using readily available mediocrity. We should instead learn to recognize human diversity and accept that besides the "well rounded har…

See this Charlie Rose interview with Jim Collins on his new book, Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck -- Why Some Thrive Despite Them All , where Jim talks about what it takes for a genius/artist to thrive ( http://www.hulu.com/watch/298461 ). Maybe these "always starters" and "distracted geniuses" are in search for truth and purity -- for meaning -- and are continuously iterating on and refining their valu…

Post by bicknergseng » Fri, Mar 21, 2014, 8:21 PM UTC

dhimes wrote: post #215

jib wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people want to be "the idea guy", because it's cool and relatively easy. The problem is that ideas are cheap. The value of any given idea is really low - I would argue that for many organisations ideas even have a negative value on average, because you are going to spend a lot of time dealing with the idea without it actually becoming something that generate value in the end. Even if you have an idea, that w…

The value of any given idea is really low I would agree if you mean average idea. Really great ideas are rare, difficult, and can change the world. The people who come up with those are rather special. And, unfortunately, rare, and almost never (in my somewhat limited experience) think of themselves as 'idea guys.' But this hivemind (nicely crurated by VCs- think that through) that ideas are worthless is very wrong.…

Post by jfischoff » Fri, Mar 21, 2014, 9:31 PM UTC

Post by lttlrck » Fri, Mar 21, 2014, 10:05 PM UTC

pcrh wrote: post #226

mattlutze wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really great ideas also have low value. Even the most brilliant idea will have been had by countless people before it is known to the world. The truly rare, difficult and world-changing is the realization (production, enactment, what have you) of a really great idea, and the luck of that realization occurring in the right context.

>Even the most brilliant idea will have been had by countless people It wasn't very brilliant then, was it?