HOW TO FIND MORE TALENT

By their own account,?economist Tyler Cowen and?venture capitalist Daniel Gross?came together to write their book?Talent, at least partly because of a shared interest in a dystopian science fiction novel, Ender's Game, about a series of talent competitions for young children. The fact that two supremely talented people should be obsessed with the topic of talent and eventually find each other should be no surprise. As they note in their book, “…the super-talented are best at spotting other super-talented individuals…” because they can appreciate traits and skills that the less initiated might miss.

You should reconsider if you believe identifying and cultivating talent is mostly just for fun and games, like bragging rights for the top chess player, golfer, skier, or tennis player. Many other countries systematically hunt for talented people. Authoritarian regimes have long been good at finding and (ruthlessly) nurturing talent above all else, e.g., Societ Chess?and gymnastics,?Cuban baseball, and?North Korean weightlifting, to name a few. Then, of course, there’s China.

According to a 2020 Brookings Institute report, "China sees talent as central to its technological advancement; President Xi Jinping has repeatedly called talent "the first resource" in China's push for 'independent innovation.'"?And indeed, due to its singular focus on cultivating talent, China may rapidly be overtaking the United States in primary research. According to an Ohio State news report, Chinese scientists publish more scholarly papers than United States scientists. Some may argue that Chinese science is inferior to Western science, but that misses the point. China is highly focused on finding bright, motivated, inventive scientists for this generation and beyond. They are playing the long game, and so should everyone else. Finding or cultivating talented people in almost any field or human endeavor makes the world better. Undoubtedly, the United States would like to maintain a lead in science, engineering, and technology, but there are many other important human endeavors.

The good news is that there is a straightforward, though not necessarily simple, way to find and cultivate more talented people: create more competitions – lots and lots more competitions.?

Are more competitions good for society and individuals? The answer is yes, provided that the competitors are fair and no one is compelled or coerced to compete.

It likely doesn’t matter how much prize money is at stake. The key to finding the best and brightest is ensuring that the standards by which competitors are judged are rigorous and entirely honest. Malcolm Gladwell has written convincingly and eloquently about how hockey development programs in Canada, and college admissions in the United States, to name just a couple of examples, have been, and still are, systematically age-biased. So, a level playing field is essential if you want to identify and nurture the best, not just a subset.

An excellent example of a competition that demonstrably works at finding the best of the best is the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, which is open to pianists of all nationalities between the ages of 18 and 30.?(They also have a Junior Competition for ages 13 to 17. Presumably, they aren't looking for talent over the age of 30 or don't believe there is any.)

The Van Cliburn is held once every four years and draws hundreds of applications from over 50 countries. The top prize is $100,000, which is nice, but approximately how much someone wins for 33rd place in the PGA Player's Championship.

To avoid getting submissions from unqualified people, applicants must submit contact information from four musicians, two of whom are chosen randomly as references. It's an exhausting process. The time from the candidate application deadline to the awards ceremony is eight months, showing the process's thoroughness. When judges sifted through nearly 400 candidates in the 2022 competition, the winner was an 18-year-old from South Korea, Yunchan Lim.?

When I first heard that Lim won the Van Cliburn, my initial reaction was skepticism. They must have made a mistake. I mean, how good can an 18-year-old pianist be? It turns out Lim is not just good for someone his age. On the contrary, Lim is off-the-charts, a once-in-a-generation gift to the world, and is likely the greatest living pianist. Extraordinary. There are not enough superlatives. It's like watching an 18-year-old Leonardo DaVinci paint.

If you think that’s hyperbole, drop everything right now and watch a YouTube video of a recent performance of Bach's Siciliano BWV 1031. Lim plays it as his last encore in a concert he gave last June in South Korea, and his interpretation is moving, emotional, and exceptional. I encourage you to compare Lim’s version to the 50+ others of the same piece played by professional pianists on YouTube, and you’ll see what I mean. Or,?watch Ben Laude break down how Lim breezes through Liszt's Transcendental Etudes, among the most difficult piano pieces ever written. He’s 18. Can he get better?!

Among the many remarkable facts about Lim is that he didn’t start playing piano until he was seven and doesn’t come from a musical family. "When I was young, I went to a piano academy in my apartment complex because I was bored while my friends were doing taekwondo. That's how I got into music." He won his first competition at age 15; he came in second in the Cliburn International Junior Piano Competition in 2018 when he was 14.?

You get the point. Lim is astonishing, and it was no accident that he won the world’s most prestigious piano competition. Kudos to the Van Cliburn organization for its rigorous and meticulous process.

If we’re looking for more unlikely and rare Yunchan Lims, which we should be, we need more level-playing field competitions like the Van Cliburn?in every domain, big and small.

Where are the most talented engineers, chemists, architects, teachers, soldiers, computer scientists, writers, nurses, physicists, entrepreneurs, and even Uber drivers? No doubt, they’re out there, waiting to be found.?So, let's help them to be found.

Start by creating new and better competitions to let the genuinely talented come forward to showcase their skills.

Use a little imagination.?

Build a stage; the performers will come.?