At an FT event a few years ago, Microsoft’s co-founder Bill Gates was asked what painful lessons he had learnt when building his software company. His answer startled the audience back then and is all the more resonant today.
Gates replied that in his early twenties he was convinced that “IQ was fungible” and that he was wrong. His aim had been to hire the smartest people he could find and build a corporate “IQ hierarchy” with the most intelligent employees at the top. His assumption was that no one would want to work for a boss who was not smarter than them. “Well, that didn’t work for very long,” he confessed. “By the age of 25, I knew that IQ seems to come in different forms.”
Those employees who understood sales and management, for example, appeared to be smart in ways that were negatively correlated with writing good code or mastering physics equations, Gates said. Microsoft has since worked on blending different types of intelligence to create effective teams. It seems to have paid off: the company now boasts a market value of more than $3tn and will celebrate its 50th birthday next year.