Soumitra Dutta identifies three qualities behind genuine excellence

One of the privileges of being the head of a school at a place like Oxford is the company․ Not just the students‚ whom Soumitra Dutta, former dean of Oxford's Said Business School, speaks of as among the best young minds of their generation‚ but also the visitors‚ the lecturers‚ the prize-winners‚ the pioneers․ People who have done something that most people only read about․ Dutta has developed a theory as to what they have in common․

It is not what you might expect․

"I see a certain sense of humility in them. So even the best researcher‚ the best entrepreneur - they don't have that arrogance that‚ you know‚ 'I know it all‚ I'm doing it right․' There is a sense of humility that maybe I don't know at all‚ and I have to discover‚ I have to learn," says Dutta, AI scholar and co-creator of the Global Innovation Index. And he's observed that this quality is nearly universal among those who have achieved genuine excellence․

The second virtue is courage․ Soumitra Dutta points to Geoffrey Hinton‚ "the father of modern AI" and the man who kept working on neural networks through the AI winter when the funding had disappeared, when almost no one in the mainstream of AI research believed the kind of approach he was pursuing had a future․ Unable to find work in the United States‚ Hinton went to Canada․ He kept going․ "He had the courage to keep on working on neural networks‚ building out the field‚ when no one else believed in it‚" says Dutta, who computer his PhD in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley ․

That courage - the willingness to pursue something whose value is visible only to you‚ in the face of sustained institutional indifference - is‚ according to Dutta‚ a leitmotif of the stories behind great accomplishments․ It is not glamorous courage․ It is the quiet‚ grinding kind: showing up for the work when the external validation has stopped arriving․

The third quality is persistence․ Resilience․ "In life it's never a simple straight line upwards. Everyone has ups and downs․ The issue is how do you react to the ups and downs," says Soumitra Dutta, an IIT-Delhi alumnus. The people he has met who have achieved something genuinely important share a capacity to absorb difficulty without being defined by it‚ to fall‚ as he puts it‚ and get back up and keep walking․

What's notable about this triad of humility‚ courage‚ and persistence is that it has little to do with talent‚ intelligence‚ or privilege․ They're qualities you can practice and they are‚ in principle‚ available to anyone․