"Imagine two groups of people. We'll call them the Geniuses and the Butterflies for short. The Geniuses are, well, geniuses. They come up with one groundbreaking invention every 10 human lifetimes. The Butterflies aren't nearly as bright. They take 1,000 lifetimes to come up with a world-changing invention. 

"But what the Butterflies lack in cognitive horsepower they make up for in social skills. Each Butterfly has 10 friends. The egghead Geniuses are a little awkward. They only have one friend. Now imagine everyone goes about their business trying to learn about cool, new inventions, either by figuring them out for themselves or learning about them from friends. 

"Which society does better, the one where the people are a hundred times smarter (the Geniuses) or the one where they're 10 times more social (the Butterflies)? Joseph Henrich, a professor of human biology at Harvard, runs the numbers and comes up with an answer: 

"'Suppose learning from friends is difficult: If a friend has [an innovation], a learner only learns it half the time. After everyone has done their own individual learning and tried to learn from their friends, do you think the innovation will be more common among the Geniuses or the Butterflies?
Well, among the Geniuses a bit fewer than 1 out of 5 individuals (18 percent) will end up with the invention. Half of those Geniuses will have figured it out all by themselves. Meanwhile, 99.9 percent of Butterflies will have the innovation, but only 0.1 percent will have figured it out by themselves.'"

Article: Why You Want to Be a Butterfly, Not a Genius