I liked the idea behind your post. One question: do you think the distribution of genius is uniform around the world? I would say it is not, but curious to hear your thoughts.

Another point along these lines, you have to have a culture that is conducive to promoting the best ideas presented by the masses from which these geniuses belong. If you do not, then you could have all the geniuses in the world but they would never be able to advance their ideas, but would rather have them trodden upon by those in power. I believe this is one of the things which enabled and perhaps even caused the rise in western civilization over the last 200+ years.