Building Moonshots

WAY 46Chase Brains: Creating a talent pipeline lays the path to long‐term success.

About the Way

A talent pipeline is a continuous and ready pool of qualified candidates who can join an organization as positions open up. More than keeping an active database, creating a talent pipeline is a strategic process, where leadership develops a deep understanding of the future expertise and skills they expect for their organization. Finding eligible workers is a constant need for most organizations, and it is an even more important need for moonshot groups, which often require specialized expertise. Within the tech industry, companies emerging from the COVID‐19 pandemic have become creative in rewriting job descriptions, implementing on‐the‐job training, and sourcing candidates from more diverse backgrounds, according to a 2021 CNBC Technology Executive Council survey.¹

More broadly, regional brain gains and drains have occurred in the past, creating talent wars. For example, a sizable pool of talent flowed out of China from the 1980s through the 2010s. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences reported that over a million Chinese has left China to study abroad since 1978, yet 70% never returned for various reasons, despite incentives from China.² The Economist put this number at 3 million Chinese who have studied overseas.³ Britain seized the opportunity to appeal to this intellectual talent, and Chinese students were the largest group of foreign nationals at UK universities for several ...