"The only thing we seem to be forgetting is that the intellectual capability of a group of people is measured by the intellectual capability of the smartest person there, not the average of all the people."

Looking at various intellectual and artistic hotspots in history, be it Bell Labs or ancient Athens or Florence in the Renaissance or even Silicon Valley today, what seems to matter is the ability to find the smartest people, put them together and let them stimulate one another.

And plenty of such people come from the peripheries. How many Ramanujans lived and died at Fleming's time while not being discovered?