Like other PG posts, I feel like he misses the elephant in the room, opportunity. You can be intelligent or highly creative, but unless you have the opportunity to use your abilities in some fashion, neither will do you much good.

Like so many others like him, they probably miss opportunity being such a big deal because it was so abundant for them. This is not to say they didn't also have to be intelligent and work hard to get where they are, but they also had to have things align for them in their life, that were outside their control, to get where they are.