I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Miles Davis, innovation, and genius – specifically about how wrong our standard models of talent development are, and how Miles Davis demonstrated this.

There’s consensus among jazz fans that Miles Davis is the most important jazz musician of all time, but they often qualify it – he wasn’t the best trumpet player, wasn’t the best composer. Rather, they acknowledge that Miles was the best bandleader: he had an exceptional ability to identify raw talent and create contexts where that talent could revolutionize music. 

For some quick history: Miles began his career in New York’s jazz scene, quickly rising to become Charlie “Bird” Parker’s bandleader (the then jazz GOAT) and playing alongside other legends like Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and Charles Mingus. But the moment Miles started innovating and creating new genres of jazz, he abandoned playing with existing stars and instead, hired a bunch of teenagers, nobodies, people without experience in the genre or the relevant instrumentation etc.

For those unfamiliar with Miles’ story: After leaving Bird’s band, Miles kept creating entirely new genres of jazz, each one radically different from the last. He expanded bebop into Cool Jazz, then created modal jazz (where musicians improvise over simplified chord structures based on scales or modes), then post-bop (combining free jazz with structured composition), then fusion (blending jazz with rock and funk using electric instruments), and finally something that doesn’t have a name but is like fusion on cocaine and heroin – my favourite jazz music ever created.

Two things stand out about this process of constant reinvention. First, each new direction was completely unimaginable from what came before – these weren’t gradual evolutions but complete paradigm shifts (listening to each period of Miles, even if it was just a few years earlier, sounds like a completely different world). Second, rather than build with the established stars he was playing with, Miles built each new revolution with completely unknown musicians who are now considered some of the most important of all time.

Look at the pattern: Miles developed modal jazz with John Coltrane (who was playing in R&B bands and struggling with heroin at the time), Bill Evans (a classically trained white pianist who brought an entirely new harmonic approach), and Cannonball Adderley. Post-bop introduced Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams – whom Miles hired without an audition at age 17, just on reputation and one meeting. Fusion featured Chick Corea (whom Miles convinced to pick up an electric piano for the first time), Dave Holland (brought in after Miles heard just one song on Jack DeJohnette’s recommendation), John McLaughlin, and Keith Jarrett (hired on the spot after Miles caught him at a club). The list goes on: John Scofield, Marcus Miller, Mike Stern, Billy Cobham, Lenny White. Almost every significant jazz musician of the last 50 years traces their start to Miles Davis.

The conventional pushback is that these musicians only became stars because Miles was famous – that either his fame gave them exposure, or his status attracted obvious up-and-coming talent. But this misses the real innovation in Miles’ approach. 

Miles wasn’t just finding “promising talent.” He was specifically seeking out musicians who weren’t constrained by the existing jazz conventions. Instead of looking for “the best in the business,” he looked for raw talent he could point in entirely new directions. He hired classical pianists who’d never played jazz, R&B bassists with no jazz experience, and teenage drummers who’d barely played professionally. Take French guitarist Dominique Gaumont, who blew minds as a teenager in his very first show with Miles on Dark Magus – with essentially no rehearsal.

The conventional wisdom would say this is backwards. We think you need to master the fundamentals, put in your years learning the traditions, and only then can you earn the right to innovate. But Miles showed this is exactly wrong. Tony Williams at 17 wasn’t developing into something great – he was already great. Michael Henderson had never played jazz before Miles but helped create an entirely new sound on bass guitar. This wasn’t just about finding “promising jazz musicians” – it was about finding brilliant minds unconstrained by jazz conventions and creating entirely new contexts for them to operate in.

This reveals something profound about talent and innovation that we desperately don’t want to admit: true genius often manifests immediately. The spark shows up early and obviously. Just look at my favourite blogger, Scott Alexander – from his very first posts, he was already writing better than anyone else in the blogosphere. Sure he, like Tony Williams, refined over the years, but the star ability was clear from the very beginning.

There’s an important caveat though: My favourite Miles bandmember, Pete Cosey, who played mind-bending guitar during my favourite Miles era, basically disappeared after leaving Miles’ band. He was revolutionary in that specific context but seemingly couldn’t translate that genius elsewhere. This points to something crucial: Some genius is context-specific rather than universal. Many successful people, seeing their excellence in one domain, try to leverage their status and wealth into other fields where they lack that same spark. This doesn’t diminish their original achievements – it just reveals that some forms of talent are context-specific rather than universal. Being extraordinary in one area doesn’t automatically translate to excellence in another.

Many institutions today focus endlessly on experience, credentials, and “paying dues.” They try to hire “the best” by looking for people who look great under existing paradigms. But Miles shows us a completely different model: Find raw talent early, ignore conventional constraints, and create new contexts for that talent to operate in.