"Cult" of Intelligence

 During the company-wide meeting today, the CEO was explaining the notion that 'things are changing', and organizations need to retain their best talents to navigate change. It's become a kind of adage that the world we live in today is far more 'competitive' than in previous times, if not simply due to the explosion of information available at people's fingertips. With the explosion in new kinds of learning, the gaps that (arguably) used to artificially divide people are no longer so evident today anymore, thus explaining a greater sense of competition for resources.
    One of the interesting things I have noticed lately, especially with theories of 'growth mindset', is how the ability to navigate accelerated change tends to be linked to some notion of special talent or intelligence. It is as though we live in a time when it is thought that the 'brightest' or most clever people are the ones most likely to survive. This tends to induce a kind of cult around that elusive quality known as "intelligence". Has anybody, however, ever really been able to define intelligence except for after the fact? But even if it is accurately labelled as intelligent or talented, can anyone really tell what marks a 'sharp'  mind from a 'not sharp' one?
     A lot of complicating factors prevent us from labelling or identifying intelligence or lack thereof. One of the biggest complicating factors is the fact that it's often impossible to really know what a person is thinking or even why. Nobody can truly peer into another person's mind to see what is happening there, or why it's doing what it does. Even the thinker herself may feel puzzled as to why she thinks as she does!
    If 'intelligence' can only be identified by what a person does (the quality of the result, that is), can one ever really pinpoint just what exactly makes a person intelligent? I have no answer to this question as of yet, but I am posing it as a way of making problematic the idea that intelligence is something one can accurately measure at all times and circumstances.