The word "genius" has been turned into a marketing buzzword these days - it's probably the most overused, least understood term in modern times, especially in technological or creative fields. The Kantian definition of genius (when it was first conceptualized) actually meant something very specific - the ability of the artist to create the "transcendental experience" of The Sublime. To inspire and be inspired, transporting everyone (including the artist themselves) into a different plane of existence. It is an experience no less profound than one of a spiritual awakening, which is why for many centuries the idea of art-making and religious practice were inextricably intertwined.
You won’t find that just by throwing money at some sleek, mass-produced gadget from the latest corporate lineup, in other words. (Though they do try - more on that below.) The Sublime comes from a place deeper in the human experience - the raw, unfiltered stories of humanity that connects to people on a visceral level (values, hopes and dreams, the imagination of a better world and existence), which is never inherent in the practice of money-making alone.
Yet we do know these collective feelings do happen on occasion - even in the secular worlds of business - those moments of inspiration where people get genuinely excited for something new - and are willing to open their hearts...and wallets, at the same time. Recent examples - the rise of crypto and NFTs, and the recent hype around artificial intelligence - shows that these moments still do exist, even in modern times. There's a lot to be said about the details of how these movements pan out, but you'll notice that they all seem to have something in common - that it always seems to "come out of nowhere", in ways nobody was able to predict.
Schopenhauer said the difference between genius and brilliance was that brilliance hits targets effective - whereas genius hits a target that nobody else can see. By definition, genius moves something from the unknown into the known, and surprises everyone as an inherent result. If you want something and you happen to get it, that's not genius - it's merely brilliance, in other words.
The "surprise" element was certainly there in the way Tezos developed over time - especially around NFTs. Raphael Lima was initially given support by the foundation to create an e-sports platform to integrate with the ecosystem - but famously made a hard pivot into NFTs, since it was where the markets were going at the time. Nobody saw it coming - even the founders and operators of the network itself (and perhaps even Lima himself) - and it evolved into something that we're still trying to make sense of, even today.
Was Lima a genius, in the traditional sense of the word? Some will definitely ascribe that title to him, though it may be a moot point since the label does not last very long without institutional support playing the claim on a loop, which he definitely does not have right now. (Perhaps posthumously where the narrative is easier to manipulate, which is unfortunately how these things are often done.) The word genius itself, too, is also a Western construct that often doesn't translate very well into other cultures because of its emphasis on individualism and isolationism - something that most of the world doesn't actually subscribe to. In most cultures, even the very idea of "self-expression" is often a foreign concept in it of itself. Of all the things you could be making art about, why would you choose to talk about yourself? A question, perhaps, that often doesn't get asked enough, even in the galleries and concert halls we have now.
A closer look at how "geniuses" emerge - always tells a more complex and nuanced picture than the efforts of one person - in most cases, a lot of what they were doing was already happening all around them - but they happened to get "picked" as "the one" that people felt represented the movements around them the most. Even Steve Jobs - whom most people would bestow the title "genius" to - was not the only one working on smart phone at the time - the smart phone idea would've come into fruition at some point, with or without him, since there was interest by both the tech and telecomm companies to build a product like the iPhone at the time. But he just happened to be there at the right place at the right time, and the rest is history, so to speak.
We like to personify complexity because our brains rebel against shapeless data, collective action, and trends; a charismatic figure is the bridge between the overwhelming complexity of real-world events and human understanding. It is a role that someone plays in the bigger scheme of things, and the ones that best understand it, accept it as being part of their life. There's a reason why the best artists often speak of inspirations and muses as something external to them - that they were "channeling" something from "out there", and they were merely acting as a medium between them and the audience.
That's why artistic mastery looks "effortless" on the part of the beholder, by the way. Yes, there is the years of practice and refinement that goes into the craft itself, but it goes even deeper than that - when artists reach a certain level of understanding of their own work, they learn to remove themselves from the process and just let things be. They're not the ones coming up with their work at that point - it is something bigger than themselves basically telling them what to do. When musicians go into a "trance state", that's what's its all about - a moment where you can turn off all the noise and chatter inside of your mind, and just let the performance be "as it is".
Now, the media and institutions love gossip - which translates into its obsession over the mundanities of personality traits and human drama. They may read articles like these to to debate about whether someone is a "genius" or not - but at the end of the day, these definitions are subjective and largely validated by social standings - so I don't feel like discussing that matter would be very productive since there's really not much any of us can do anything about it anyway. But, it may be worth exploring the idea whether or not genius can be manufactured in controlled environments - which is an endeavor that seems to come up over and over, regardless of industry, history, time and place. The spark that create entire movements - can it be replicated if you have the right formula and throw enough money at it?
The short answer: no. There are plenty of examples where people have tried - big companies and venture capital investing in startups, overambitious parents of prodigal children, government entities trying to pick the "winners" for which businesses get to operate and which ones don't - all have failure rates of 99%+, which often leads to incredible amounts of money, time, and resources getting wasted - almost predictably so.
The longer answer: well, maybe there is a small chance, if you can sufficiently stay out of the way. Frank Zappa has an interesting interview (from 1987) where he makes the argument that the "cigar-chomping old guys" were actually better for experimental music because they would at least admit that they don't know what they were looking at but threw it out into the market anyway. Once in a while, it worked, so...why not? The most dangerous thing, Zappa argues, is having people in charge who think they know what people want and can tell people what to think - or even how to feel - which stifles creativity and innovation in irreparable ways.
In that regard, Tezos has at least some of this ethos going on. In most other chains, they probably would have shut down Lima's "excursion" into NFTs since that's not he was getting paid for - but, they decided to let it run its course and see what would happen. The result of that "I don't know" was Hic et Nunc, then its evolution into TEIA - and the rest is history, so to speak.
Of course, for that explosion in the HEN ecosystem to happen, there had to be a lot of things already there - the Tezos network itself (both in tech and in its governance), the time it gave Lima to work on his project with proper support (and him being at a point in his life where he could focus on keeping it going), the NFT hype itself (which nobody predicted would happen), the failure of ETH to contain its exorbitant gas fees, artists believing in the promises of NFTs and crypto itself (especially from abroad), investors feeling bullish enough to jump in, etc. The stars needed to align in a certain way for it to trigger that "spark", and that is something that cannot be triggered artificially - especially not on a strict timeline that's convenient for people's calendars and runway cycles. Even experienced investors will always warn people - there is no way to time the market: do not bother, do not even try.
Do we know what works in crypto right now? Of course not - this is especially true in an industry that has yet to find its product-market-fit - any project or chain claiming victory right now is a bit premature, to say the least. Any of the coins out there (even the "big" ones) could crash at any time, since they don't have actual customers to stabilize its demand. The need for experimentation is still needed more than ever, if anything.
So the whole "I don't know, but let's try it out anyway" ethos I feel like is best represented in Tezos right now. We have a community of builders, artists, technologists, and everyday people just trying different things out, pretty much all the time. Which ideas are going to work, which ones are going to fail? The hell if we know. But hey, try it out anyway - let's see what happens. It's a kind of place where that can happen - where it is allowed, and even encouraged.
But "genius" - whether you consider it a concept or a person - cannot be rushed, as the saying goes. There's a few "wunderkind" types in the space from the earlier days of crypto where perhaps they may have been fit the Kantian definition of genius at the time - but they made too many concessions to their values that nobody can really seriously consider them to be that anymore...they are merely brilliant, not genius. Not that it really matters either way honestly.
Just keep in mind that that guy who scammed everyone was once considered a "genius" by many people too, by the way. Perhaps there were few things he did right that convinced many people that he could be one - he looked the part, rehearsed his lines, perhaps even read up on the behaviors of past "greats" as examples to model himself after. But as said earlier - they rushed him, and well, now he's in jail. Be careful what you ask for, eh?