Talent

Talent is a guide to finding, assessing, attracting and keeping highly talented people. It asks how to spot creative ability, and whether human creativity can be predicted at all or is something irreducible that intuition can only glimpse, unique each time it appears.

The authors are Tyler Cowen, an economist at George Mason University, and Daniel Gross, a venture capitalist and entrepreneur. They set out to study the art and science of finding talent at the highest level: people with the creativity, drive and insight to transform an organization and improve everyone around them.

The book walks through the main areas of scientific research relevant to talent search. Topics include how to conduct an interview, how much weight to give intelligence, how to judge personality and match traits to jobs, and how to evaluate people in online interactions such as Zoom calls. It also covers why talented women are still undervalued and how to spot them, how to understand the special talents of people who have disabilities or supposed disabilities, and how to use delegated scouts to find talent.

The authors treat talent appreciation as an art that can be improved through study and experience. Spotting underrated, brilliant individuals is one of the simplest ways to gain an organizational edge, and the book is meant both for people searching for talent and for those who hope to be found and discovered.