Where to Start with Tyler Cowen & Daniel Gross
Tyler Cowen and Daniel Gross are an unusual author pairing: a renowned economist and a young tech entrepreneur who joined forces to write about how to find extraordinary people. Tyler Cowen holds the Holbert C. Harris Chair in Economics at George Mason University and runs Marginal Revolution, the most widely read economics blog in the world. He is the author of numerous books including the New York Times bestseller “The Great Stagnation” (2011), and in 2011 The Economist named him one of the most influential economists of the decade. Daniel Gross was accepted into Y Combinator at age 18, founded Cue (an AI-powered search engine acquired by Apple in 2013), and in 2018 launched Pioneer, a global platform that identifies and funds talented people who lack traditional access to opportunity. Their collaboration “Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World” (2022) brings together Cowen’s academic rigor and Gross’s hands-on experience evaluating thousands of applicants to offer a fresh, research-backed approach to spotting potential.
Start here
Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World
Tyler Cowen & Daniel Gross · 288 pages · 2022 · Moderate
Themes: talent identification, creative assessment, interviewing, cognitive diversity, unconventional hiring
Economist Tyler Cowen and venture capitalist Daniel Gross wrote this book to challenge conventional wisdom about how we evaluate people. Where most hiring books focus on filtering out bad candidates, “Talent” focuses on recognizing extraordinary ones, especially those who do not fit the standard mold.
Why Start Here
This is the only book Cowen and Gross have written together, and it brings a genuinely fresh perspective to the talent conversation. They draw on research in psychology, economics, and their own experience evaluating thousands of applicants through Pioneer to argue that most organizations are terrible at spotting creative, high-energy people. The book covers how to read personality traits during interviews, why intelligence tests miss creative thinkers, how to assess people in online interactions, and why women and people with disabilities are systematically undervalued.
The most valuable chapters deal with what the authors call “the art of the interview.” They recommend probing for curiosity, obsession, and the ability to generate energy in others rather than testing for polish and confidence. The advice is often counterintuitive: look for people who disagree with you well, pay attention to what candidates do in their free time, and be skeptical of anyone who seems too well-prepared.
What to Expect
A 288-page book that blends academic research with practical advice. The tone is intellectual but accessible, reflecting Cowen’s background as a popular economics writer. Some chapters are more theoretical than others, but each includes concrete suggestions. Best for leaders, investors, and anyone whose success depends on identifying exceptional people before everyone else does.