ABSTRACT
What made Dostoyevsky a world-class novelist, Einstein a world-class physicist, Disraeli a world-class diplomat, or Mozart a world-class musician? We suggest that what made such world-class leaders excellent is that they were experts in their areas of skill. To explore this possibility, we first consider alternative views of the nature of expertise and of how expertise develops. We then present a demonstration study that argues for our own preferred point of view about how developing expertise translates into excellence.
