Exactly.

As the saying goes "talent is evenly distributed; opportunity is not."

I've known lots of very smart people working what would be considered dead-end, or at least, lower-end jobs.

Yes, I know a lot of people who don't have opportunity or have some sort of mental roadblock that makes them not put efforts into area which can potentially produce result. I am not sure if there is some name of this phenomenon.

But usually they need a visionary who can make them believe in the idea and then they can put their work/efforts/mind into it with confidence and they do end up achieving the result at the end.