causal

Cori lab shows organization beats raw genius

Gerty and Carl Cori ran a lab at Washington University St. Louis that produced six Nobel laureate students despite not being the most prestigious lab able to cherry-pick top talent, suggesting their success rested on replicable organizational structures and cultural practices rather than on access to rare 'seven-sigma' genius — which matters because such practices are, in principle, replicable.

causalpending

Speaker

Patrick Collison

Evidence Quote

the thing that distinguished them and their students was not that they were these seven 'sigma-Martians', it was rather that they found organizational structures and cultural practices that really worked. Those are, at least in principle, more replicable.

Source

Patrick Collison — Why Silicon Valley's most talented should leaveDwarkesh Patel Podcast
Created: 6/13/2026, 3:26:23 AM

My Notes

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