it’s foolish to think the person who’s first can work it all out,” Gladwell remarked.

We also believe that super-talented individuals, near the top of the achievement distribution, are in some fundamental ways like inventors. These individuals arrive at the top of their craft because they have pioneered new ways of doing things, whether it is Picasso and Braque creating cubism, Henry Ford realizing he should pay his workers $5 a day

“To do original work: It’s not necessary to know something nobody else knows. It is necessary to believe something few other people believe.”

Productive mediocrity requires discipline of an ordinary kind. It is safe and threatens no one. Nothing will be changed by mediocrity. . . . But genius is uncontrolled and uncontrollable. You cannot produce a work of genius according to a schedule or an outline.