I care deeply about opportunity and fairness, because I grew up really poor.

We've become so used to the concept as a measuring and sorting tool, that it and its correlates - below-average, above-average - are everyday speech. We don't even question the language, although the challenges we face require a different mindset.

I care deeply about opportunity and fairness, because I grew up really poor.

When you start digging into things like character, though, the notion that people have high character or low character is very strong. What's crazy is that my thinking is not a new insight. The very first large-scale study of character, still one of the largest ever, was done in the early 1900s by Hugh Hartshorne, an ordained minister and a scientist.

The whole idea of timing tests is a century old, from a scientist who thought speed and ability were tightly correlated, which they are not.

Talent - really, everyone agrees, it's multidimensional, and often overlooked in standard assessments. That's not hard for people to accept.

Education and the workforce: I think these two things go together in terms of human potential.