The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

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

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Dean Simonton, a psychologist, has spent his career studying creative productivity. He has found that even creative geniuses, what some may call David Guetta, have a hard time recognizing when they have a hit. Simonton spent some time studying Beethoven and spoke about him,

“Beethoven’s own favorites among his symphonies, sonatas, and quartets are n... See more

He would acknowledge that building devices like chess-playing machines “might seem a ridiculous waste of time and money. But I think the history of science has shown that valuable consequences often proliferate from simple curiosity.”3 “He never argued his ideas,” Brock McMillan says of Shannon. “If people didn’t believe in them, he ignored those p

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