What's it like to be a genius?

Jim Collins explains what it's like to win the Macarthur "Genius Award" (worth $500,000 bones).

But here's a little advice to the new fellows. If you're an academic, expect your colleagues to assume that all of your papers are being accepted - little will they know that your work still gets rejected regularly.

And expect not to have a lot of fun with board games. Trivial Pursuit has never been the same. My team always assumes it has the competitive advantage. But once I miss a few questions, my teammates turn on me: "What's the matter with you? You're supposed to be a genius!" The other team chimes in: "Clearly, the MacArthur Foundation made a mistake."

These unrealistically high expectations extend even to children's games. After my daughter recently beat me at Candyland, she looked at me, disenchanted, and said, "Dad, I thought you were supposed to be a genius." I tried to explain that the MacArthur award was for creativity, not genius, and that my creative work did not encompass the selection of colored cards from a randomly shuffled deck. My daughter just slowly shook her head and walked out of the room.