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While the notion of someone being extraordinary in the most positive of terms is ancient, the more contemporary understanding of giftedness and talented is mainly American with roots in the 1970s Cold War United States. Since then, for good and for worse, American scholarship has dominated its research and practice. Although the study is now pursued globally, and for the same reasons which once triggered it in the United States, research follows, or is entirely built upon, American theories, models, practices, and more surprisingly, also American values. With the emergence of big data, however, behavioural genetics, epigenetics, the continued revelations of evolutionary research—all of which have emerged in the natural sciences after the launch of gifted American education—have left much, if not all, of the foundations on which giftedness and talent has so far been understood wanting. As much as there is a need to support gifted individuals in society by all means possible, few take into account that giftedness in the light of evolutionary dynamics is a dysfunctional social phenomenon. Scholars, practitioners and political leaders alike are often uninformed of, or even insensitive to, the consequences of solid recent findings in other disciplines than education and psychology. This keynote will address a few of the available evidence which are challenging both our current understanding of gifted education as well as the largely American cultural basis of how giftedness and talent have been defined to date. The general ambition of the world economy is to make every effort to harness talent worldwide for economic growth. However, this is an impossible objective with little or no support in objective empirical research if pursued in a large scale under a neoliberal ideology and its instruments of social and economic control. ; This was an invited keynote address to the conference, which invites all interested scholars from the Balkan countries including neighbouring Hungary and Romania. The conference is traditionally staged by the local Preschool Teacher Training College "Mihailo Palov" at Vrsac. It is an annual forum for informally discuss scholarly issues in relation to giftedness, talent and its education and understanding. This conference was the 25th anniversary conference chaired by Dr. Jelena Prtljaga

Who, rather than what, decides what giftedness is? The academic world traditionally focuses on theoretical descriptors whereas society as a whole is more interested in practical function. This partly divided focus is becoming increasingly critical and problematic as economies are becoming global and the political objective is to create a knowledge economy. High-achieving and creative individuals are becoming key individuals in making the emerging global economy possible. In the wake of this development follows a shift from theoretical understandings of giftedness to a focus on what the gifted and talented can actually do. There are therefore a number of deciding factors in defining what giftedness is: academic concerns and practical concerns as defined by society. Within each social group with various vested interests are individuals promoting and defending their own agenda for a number of reasons, prompted unaware by human nature. Whoever has dominance in any social context also reserves the right to definition of how to understand giftedness and talent irrespective of whether such a definition is scientifically right or wrong. In conclusion the current state of affairs in the light of the global superculture and its constituting knowledge economy is discussed. ; This is an invited Keynote Address to the 20ieth WCGTC Conference, Louisville, KY, USA, 10-14 August 2013.

The transition from a locally planned economy to a global knowledge economy in Russia features several conflicts between the old and the new. At the center of Russian restructuring stands the young talented. Considering the significance of talent for economic growth it is important to explore how talent is understood and managed by different Russian types of organizations. A group of experts (N = 46) were therefore selected to participate in the study representing government, business, and education. Data were gathered by means of semi-structured interviews on location in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, Russia. The study was descriptive in nature and a straightforward qualitative content analysis, as constituted by the categorization of data, was employed. Results showed that all stakeholders identified talent as both high-achieving and creative. They also recognized structural difficulties in implementing talent support. Also, different groups had different understandings of the nature and societal purpose of talent. This article is concluded with focusing issues, derived from the data analysis, important to consider when establishing talent-dependent organizations or businesses in current Russia. ; This research was undertaken in 2012 with financial support from the Institute of Public Projects, as assigned and approved by the President of the Russian Federation, to the Autonomous Non-Profit Project Organization (ANPO): Project Bureau "Social Action," Grant No. 127.