I don’t subscribe to one specific model but the thing is that you very rarely if ever see a group of average people achieving something great without a few outliers mixed in. In some situations the greatness of some was exactly enabled by others simply not getting in the way.
You might bring up something like Bell Labs as a counter example but my point would be that it was a large group of exceptional people and you got synergies out of putting them together but compared to the society in which they existed they were each individually outliers too.
