Why hiring the ‘best’ people produces the least creative results

[C C]

https://aeon.co/ideas/why-hiring-the-bes...ve-results

EXCERPT: . . . The burgeoning of teams – most academic research is now done in teams [...] tracks the growing complexity of our world. [...] The complexity of modern problems often precludes any one person from fully understanding them.

[...] The multidimensional or layered character of complex problems also undermines the principle of meritocracy: the idea that the ‘best person’ should be hired. There is no best person. When putting together an oncological research team, a biotech company such as Gilead or Genentech would not construct a multiple-choice test and hire the top scorers, or hire people whose resumes score highest according to some performance criteria. Instead, they would seek diversity. They would build a team of people who bring diverse knowledge bases, tools and analytic skills. [...]

Believers in a meritocracy might grant that teams ought to be diverse but then argue that meritocratic principles should apply within each category. Thus the team should consist of the ‘best’ mathematicians, the ‘best’ oncologists, and the ‘best’ biostatisticians from within the pool.

That position suffers from a similar flaw. Even with a knowledge domain, no test or criteria applied to individuals will produce the best team. Each of these domains possesses such depth and breadth, that no test can exist. Consider the field of neuroscience. [...] Given that complexity, any attempt to rank a collection of neuroscientists from best to worst, as if they were competitors in the 50-metre butterfly, must fail. What could be true is that given a specific task and the composition of a particular team, one scientist would be more likely to contribute than another. Optimal hiring depends on context. Optimal teams will be diverse.

Evidence for this claim can be seen in the way that papers and patents that combine diverse ideas tend to rank as high-impact. It can also be found in the structure of the so-called random decision forest, a state-of-the-art machine-learning algorithm....

MORE: https://aeon.co/ideas/why-hiring-the-bes...ve-results

[Syne]

Some very vague reasoning for giving up meritocracy in at least each role of a diverse team. After all, a wholly mediocre team is not likely to produce high-impact papers.

[Yazata]

Why hiring the ‘best’ people produces the least creative results

Is the premise in the subject line really true? (I'd like to see some persuasive evidence.) Or it is some professor talking out of his butt again?

The multidimensional or layered character of complex problems also undermines the principle of meritocracy: the idea that the ‘best person’ should be hired. There is no best person. When putting together an oncological research team, a biotech company such as Gilead or Genentech would not construct a multiple-choice test and hire the top scorers, or hire people whose resumes score highest according to some performance criteria.

I once had the opportunity to observe a biotech company (neither one of these companies) interviewing for a scientific position.

The interview was conducted by the company's director of research. The individual being interviewed was a young graduate with a new Ph.D. (from the U. of Washington in this case). The interview was conducted at a very high technical level.

It seems that the company was working on a new oncology drug that employed RNA interference using short interfering RNAs (siRNAs). This new drug killed cancer cells like a champ in vitro (in laboratory dishes).

But serious problems appeared when it was used in vivo (in living subjects, animals in this case). Enzymes in the blood stream broke down the agent before it could get to cancer cells. When it got to the cells, it had to cross the cell's cell membrane to get into the cell. Targeting the cancer cells was a problem, as was preventing unwanted side effects in other cells.

The interviewer wanted to know what the candidate's experience was in that kind of work, who he had worked under in graduate school, and what his thinking was in general about these problems. Remember, the interviewer was a researcher himself and already knew about most of the various approaches that had already been taken to these problems.

The intent of the interview was obviously to find the 'best' candidate to tackle this set of problems. My sense is that's how most scientific hiring occurs in the biotech industry.

Instead, they would seek diversity. They would build a team of people who bring diverse knowledge bases, tools and analytic skills.

Maybe. It depends on what "diversity" means. It doesn't mean a black one, a white one and a Hispanic one, plus some 'trans' or feminist ones.

It might be more applicable if it means diversity of approaches to the problems. The interviewer obviously didn't know how to solve the problems facing his company or they would have already done so. Maybe one candidate might propose coating the siRNAs in lipid and then coating the lipid with an enzyme that facilitates movement through cell membranes. (I know that approach has in fact been used by other companies to address similar problems.) Another candidate might be hot to try something else. So new ideas and original thinking would be welcome, provided that it was technically informed and sufficiently sophisticated.  

Believers in a meritocracy might grant that teams ought to be diverse but then argue that meritocratic principles should apply within each category. Thus the team should consist of the ‘best’ mathematicians, the ‘best’ oncologists, and the ‘best’ biostatisticians from within the pool.

Right.

That position suffers from a similar flaw. Even with a knowledge domain, no test or criteria applied to individuals will produce the best team.

They all have to know something relevant to the purpose of the team. They need to understand the problem and the granular technical details. They need to know what's been tried and what kind of problems were noted. It's better if they have already thought deeply about and even done research in the areas that they will be addressing.  

Each of these domains possesses such depth and breadth, that no test can exist. Consider the field of neuroscience. [...] Given that complexity, any attempt to rank a collection of neuroscientists from best to worst, as if they were competitors in the 50-metre butterfly

Sure, because not all neuroscientists specialize in the same issues. But whatever neuroscience problem you are addressing, you would probably want to hire somebody who has more experience, knows more about it and has thought about it.

Most academic subjects are internally diverse. Philosophers aren't philosophers aren't philosophers. If you want a specialist in non-monotonic logic, you probably wouldn't hire a Nietzsche specialist or a 'queer theorist'. I don't see how hiring lots of specialists in areas remote from a specialty in question would help a department improve its standing in that particular area. The irrelevant hires probably wouldn't have much to contribute.

[Leigha]

Candidates might appear like "the best" on paper, but only until people are actually hired and prove their worth, could we ever know who the best are for any particular job. A guy at my employer recently was let go for under performing, showing up late, etc but on paper (resume), he looked like perfection.

[Ben the Donkey]

Marker.