Most intelligence models include an array of processes and mechanisms that enable experts to generalize their knowledge and processes during career transitions and produce flexibility in cognitive structures that enable individuals to overcome limitations in applying expert knowledge and processes across domains and functional areas. These processes have been described variously as insightful thinking, induction, eduction, elaborating and mapping, novelty and metaphorical capacity, inductive inference, divergent production abilities, analogy, flexibility of use, and closure. They are discussed in light of the retrospective interviews with twenty-four elite performers in three domains (business, sports, and music) who successfully and repeatedly transitioned to higher positions within their field.

Chapter six speaks against the popular image, commonly accepted within the circles of contemporary advocates of theistic evolutionism, of God creating within and through evolutionary processes, thus sharing his creative power with his creatures. The criticism of this idea is followed by a constructive argument that we should classify evolutionary changes and newly emerged species as an integral aspect of divine governance rather than divine creation, which for Aquinas means but one thing or action – i.e., bringing things into existence ex nihilo, and not through transformation of already existing matter.