THE EXPERTISE APPROACH AND SKILL ACQUISITION Research on expertise is by definition focused on a restricted sample of individuals. Experts are people who consistently produce outstanding performance in their domains (Ericsson, 2006) and as such are without exception located on the positive side of the skill distribution. The usual approach in the study of expertise is to compare the extreme gro...

Generally in sports, there is a strong assumption of a connection between skill level in young age and adulthood. Studies have mainly focused on the coaches’ understanding and role in identifying and developing talent. In this article we turn our attention towards the athletes’ perspectives, interviewing talented young football players (five boys and five girls) about their perceptions of their...

In this article, we study the evaluation of talented early career researchers, as done in grant allocation processes. To better understand funding decisions, we studied the grant allocation process in more detail, and compared the notion of talent in grant allocation with more general notions of talent existing in the academic work environment. The comparison is based on interviews with 29 scho...

In our 2016 paper (Collins et al., 2016a), we proposed that superchamps (athletes who have achieved the highest level in their sport) were differentiated from their less successful counterparts by their use of positive proactive coping and a "learn from it" approach to challenge. This skill-based focus to talent development (TD) is supported extensively in the literature (e.g., MacNamara et al....

The recent boom of direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic tests, aimed at measuring children's athletic potential, is the latest wave in the 'pre-professionalization' of children that has characterized, especially but not exclusively, the USA in the last 15 years or so. In this paper, I analyse the use of DTC genetic tests, sometimes coupled with more traditional methods of 'talent scouting', to asse...

Objective: Within the knowledge based economy, talents are known as a strategic talent in order to achieve sustainable competitive advantage as well as a criterion for growth in different organizational and social level. Thus, in recent studies, talent management architecture has emphasized on exploring and identifying talents in different fields. Accordingly, the present study aimed to provide...

Despite evident differences between approaches to talent development, many share a set of common characteristics and presumptions. We call this the Standard Model of Talent Development (SMTD). This model is articulated and the relevant literature drawn out to highlight the model’s strengths and weaknesses. The SMTD has been enormously influential, in terms of both policy documentation and pract...