To find the best talent, you have to be connected to the world in the right way

A second key idea of our book is a focus on soft networks of social connection. That is, you need to be connected to the world in the right way if you want to find the best talent. If you think of the talent problem as you sitting in a chair and issuing proclamations about who are the smartest people or who were the most hard working people, you will have only limited success. The way you truly succeed with talent identification is by getting the talented people to want to find you. This is what economists call a decentralized mechanism, as outlined in the works of Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek. So on any given day, it may not seem urgent your outreach to the rest of the world, but the image you project, you could say, what kind of bat signal are you sending? Who is showing up at your door? Who wants to meet you? Who thinks it is something important to recommend you to your friends? Those are all instances of soft networks for talent identification. And if you invest ex-ante…