That isn't a sane starting point; if a corporation's strategy is to only hire above average employees they're going to fail. Enron springs to mind. Corporations generally take average people and give them a reasonably well defined scopes of simple work to complete that adds value. The bigger the corporation the more difficulty they have handling even the standard deviation above average differently to the one below; almost everyone just becomes a human resource to be swapped around based on social factors.

The people who need to be above average and exceptionally are senior management and maybe a few bright sparks in middle management. Most of the value-add happens there that builds social machines that then do the work.

> If average is all we need, then anyone can do it.

Pretty much, yes. That is why the range of salaries on offer is pretty compressed compared to the range of returns capitalists get.

> The people who need to be above average and exceptionally are senior management and maybe a few bright sparks in middle management. Most of the value-add happens there that builds social machines that then do the work.

That is the dream. Upper management can get software made without talent.

But is seems to be the greatest ideas in the last 30 years didn’t start in board rooms. They started with a couple coders creating a new idea.

No boardroom could have invented Google. It was so fundamentally different than what other search engines were doing.

We have this myth that upper management is so important. It is as the business grows in size, they are excellent for coordination. But ideas come from people closer to the problems.