[akamaka]

One possible answer is that the most talented guy on the team shouldn't take on too large a share of the work.

Sure, he can do any task better and faster than anyone else, but in doing so he's robbing the less talented team members of tasks that they could worked on. The overall team productivity might be higher if he sits back and pays close attention to what his teammates are getting stuck on and only spends his time filling in those little gaps that nobody else can fill.

[CM30]

That's another, somewhat seperate issue that should get more attention.

It's too easy to have the best members of a team do everything that's even remotely complex or 'difficult', and end up causing the others to stagnate as a result. The reasoning often becomes 'why learn something new when the smart guy will take care of it much faster?''

So you end up with one or two great programmers/designers/employees/whatever doing the 'tricky' stuff, and a large group of others basically doing the same grunt work day in, day out.

Then all you need is the top 'talent' to leave, and well, the company is in deep trouble. The other team members end up struggling to continue work that they never needed to learn how to do, or never got the chance to learn how to do.