Talent

Outline

Talent (2022) explores how to recognise exceptional potential in people, especially those overlooked by traditional credentials. Tyler Cowen and Daniel Gross share interview questions, lessons from experience, and insights on intelligence, personality, and energy to help leaders, investors, and hiring managers spot creative and ambitious individuals. The book also examines why talent is often missed in women, minorities, and people with disabilities, and how to find it anyway.

• Traditional credentials often hide exceptional potential, so judging people by their degrees alone means missing capable and creative candidates.
• Interview questions designed to probe a person's thinking can reveal ability better than a standard list of past qualifications.
• Intelligence, personality, and energy each play a part in spotting talent, and none of them should be judged in isolation.
• Talent is frequently overlooked in women, minorities, and people with disabilities, so finding it takes deliberate effort and a wider lens.
• Leaders, investors, and hiring managers can improve their judgement by drawing on lessons from experience rather than relying on conventional thinking.

Tyler Cowen and Daniel Gross bring together perspectives from economics and technology entrepreneurship. Cowen is an American economist at George Mason University, co-author of the blog Marginal Revolution, and host of the podcast Conversations with Tyler. Gross is an American entrepreneur and investor who founded the startup accelerator Pioneer and previously worked at Apple and Y Combinator.