I really don't think intelligence is the most important part of innovation. That sounds silly, and you obviously need some baseline of intelligence and having more certainly helps. But insights come from context and having the right dots to connect. Talking to the right people, knocking the right rocks together, reading the right books, and having the courage to act on the insights that show up.

Context and action seem to be the most important parts of innovation to me. The reason mathematicians come up with incredible and novel mathematics isn't because they were just more intelligent, it's because they were the ones looking and the ones who had spent time building up their knowledge around mathematics. They could have been just as intelligent but raised to work on a farm instead, having none of the dots, context or impetus to make novel connections in fields that seem driven by intelligence.

The more different "big, professional" companies I've worked at, the more I've come to the conclusion that no-one knows what they're doing and everyone's just making things up on the fly. So yeah, I'd pay it.

I think this quote is less about the majority, or the absolute truth and more about encouraging that one person who is to not get tripped up on the way there. It may not be true for most, but it's true for a few, and those few need encouragement and support to change the world.

I think you are right that people do not need much encouragement. I still don't think saying that most successful people are of average intelligence is a "smart" thing to say unless it is true. I don't think it is true at all but I was opening up the floor for a fact or two. In the end, whatever helps someone make a net positive change is good so maybe i'm just being annoying :)

It’s certainly false though the sentiment might still be valid, basically that the lack of smarts isn’t something that’s holding up more inventions from coming into this world.

Yes, this is the case. Smartness is not the limiting factor. The biggest limiting factor is number of opportunities.

> The biggest limiting factor is number of opportunities.

Could you elaborate. Do you mean more opportunities to fail and learn ?

Someone who is more intelligent will create more opportunities for themselves. Seems to be pretty linked.

That statement is wrong, but it has the nice effect to remove self inhibition due to complex of inferiority.

Replacing everything with most things would be correct.

Creating some things did not require intelligence.

Sure, but what's the point of putting a giant false statement right at the start of the post? It just makes the rest seem silly. I'm not convinced it's even motivational to the average person.

I think what he meant is that if you look into the process of how products and system are designed, you will likely find out most of them quite comprehensible, and more than often made by a group of men/women that are not necessarily passionate about it. Hence with great passion and even average intelligence, there is no reason we can not achieve a far better product than the current one.

Could be true but a different kind of intelligence. E.g at any point in time of their teenage time, woz would have been considered superior to jobs in terms of intelligence, but may be now we realise both are intelligent in their own ways. You definitely need to be intelligent to build a (successful) business, but not certainly hacker kind of intelligent but intelligent.

Of course this isn't true.