Generativeness – the ability to produce new ideas that benefit the whole team. Combined with the ability to executive, having high generative capital on your team sets you up for growth.
Generative talent is often overlooked talent. Often mistaken mislabeled as ” a creative”, generative talent demonstrates social awareness, broad knowledge, and the ability to connect disparate concepts using their extensive mental models. If you’re talking to someone who looks like a “generalist” it’s possible they are high in “generativeness.”
To spot generative people, I ask candidates what they’re passionate about, then probe deeper with “why” and “what else” questions. I’m looking for real-world applications, attempts to engage me in ideation, and how they handle knowledge gaps. Click here to read more about my interview process.
The use case for needing to hire generative talent is simple: it’s for firms seeking to grow. And growth will likely be a function of tech, infrastructure, labor, and education. A multiplier on this growth production function is ideation. I created this Perplexity page for you with more information.
You might encounter a roadblock — talent high in generativeness may be low to practical skills. You could optimize for finding talent high in both — but but that talent could be pricey due to being in short supply or already employed.
If you are skilled at enabling and launching talent, optimizing for generativeness over practical skill may generate long-term gains for you and your firm. Practical skills are easily taught through observation and generative talent will likely figure it out quickly — that’s why they’re special.
Talent Revolution 