Tyler Cowen is an American columnist, economist, and professor with a global reputation for spotting and nurturing incredible talent who go on to attract international recognition for their work and achievements. For anyone in the business of building and managing organizations, it's worth studying Cowen's ability to discover and enable the most talented people before anyone else notices them.
His process boils down to five main components:
- Distribution: He has honed the ability to promote and position opportunities in a way that attracts an extraordinarily high talent pool.
- Application: While others focus on credentials, references, and test results, Cowen narrows in on an applicants' ideas and creativity.
- Selection: The value of fine-tuning one's taste should never be underestimated. Tyler has relentlessly trained his for decades, resulting in a best-in-class ability to spot the finest talent.
- Inspiration: Cowen fills his candidates with a boldness of vision, which in turn inspires others within their social circles to dream bigger and reimagine what's possible.
- Referrals: Starting with one underrated yet highly qualified candidate, Cowen quickly finds many equally qualified people through the power of word of mouth.
People, not capital, are what push endeavors forward. The challenge many leaders face is the ability to attract the right people and empower them to use resources in innovative ways. We can move our search in the right direction by cultivating high-quality pools of talent, designing incentives that entice the ideal candidates, developing our ability to recognize talent by cracking cultural codes, and raising the ambitions of those selected by supporting them and promoting their accomplishments.
