16 CHAPTER 1 1 The Map of Innovation: Creating Something Out of Nothing By Kevin O'Connor Idon't care how smartyou are, ‘or what you've accomplished in your life, or how revolutionary your product concept is, great companies are built by teams of people and not solely by their CEOs or founders. I want to talk about how to hire, organize, and retain great people because if you don't do all three of those s things, ultimately nothing good Team of business people at work is going to happen, 1 always look for people who are way smarter than average. A lot of people confuse skills with intelligence. ... Ideally you want to hire a person who is very smart and possesses the skills you need. If you are forced to choose between skills and smarts, smarts always wins. Intelligence is the most necessary trait when you're creating something that hasn’t been done before. You need people who can figure out solutions to all the problems you are going to face, Smart is good. But smart in and of itself isn’t enough. That's why I also try to discover how competitive they are. The important thing is a continuous demonstration that they competed and won. If somebody has this trait, it will manifest itself somehow. In sports, we call the limit of somebody's ability to endure everything his “pain threshold.” The theory is that the greater the person's pain threshold, the longer he will go on fighting, The battle for a new market can be brutal. You need a cohesive team with a high pain threshold to wear your competition out, to make them quit. Find people who are “athletes,” used to competing. ‘The boss's role is to make sure the organization is going in the right direction and to act with integeity, and to make sure the smart athletes she has hired have the resources they need to get the job done. i pain thresholds the point at which a stimulus begins to produce a reaction