[NaturalPhallacy]

Yup! Time and effort absolutely count.

But the "star line" folk out of Heinlein's Beyond this Horizon are the ones that catapult the entire species forward.

The Wright brothers, the Norman Bourlags, the Nikola Teslas, the Alan Turings.

[cutemonster]

What about charismatic poor decision makers, pulling everyone in the wrong direction? Or evil geniuses

Maybe multiply with sign(talent)? And the exponent could be abs(talent):

    sing(talent) *
       (effort * time) ^
                 abs(talent)