Overall, the Edge piece by Eric Weinstein linked above is not well-written, but I like this passage very much:

Most educated people have come to revere the spending of the fabled '10,000 hours' in training to become respected jacks of one trade. ...

The essence of genius as a modality is that it seems to reverse the logic of excellence.

The reason for this is that sometimes we must, at least initially, move away from apparent success and headlong into seeming failure to achieve outcomes few understand are even possible. This is the essence of the so-called 'Adaptive Valley,' which separates local hills from true summits of higher fitness. Genius, at a technical level, is the modality combining the farsightedness needed to deduce the existence of a higher peak with the character and ability to survive the punishing journey to higher ground. Needless to say, the spectacle of an individual moving against his or her expert community away from carrots and towards sticks is generally viewed as a cause for alarm independently of whether that individual is a malfunctioning fool or a genius about to invalidate community groupthink.