Talent Era, The: Achieving a High Return on Talent

Chapter 1. The Talent Value Chain

We are living in a time when talented people—many of them represented by powerful agents, attorneys, professional associations, or unions—dominate in business, as they have for the past four decades in athletics and entertainment.

In effect, all employees now can be classified as free agents and all fields of labor as performing arts—places where field performance (not politics, popularity, personality, potential, academic degrees, or social pedigrees) matters most, where the value a person adds on the job is recognized and rewarded, where managers and administrators serve as coaches and counselors and either become world-class leaders of talented people or lose their jobs.

For the first time at many business schools, ...