A talent was 26 kilograms of silver before it was a quality of the mind.
In ancient Greece, a talanton was a unit of weight used to measure precious metals. One Attic talent equaled approximately 26 kilograms of silver, enough to pay a crew of 200 rowers for a month in the fifth century BC.1 The word came from the Greek verb meaning to bear or to weigh.
The shift from a measure of precious metal to a quality of the mind came through the Parable of the Talents in the Gospel of Matthew (25:14-30). In the parable, a master gives his servants different amounts of money (talents) before traveling abroad. Two servants invest and multiply their talents. A third buries his in the ground and returns only the original amount. The master praises the first two and condemns the third.2
Medieval interpreters read the parable as a moral instruction about God-given abilities, not money. By the fifteenth century, "talent" in English referred to a natural aptitude or gift, and the monetary meaning had faded from common usage.3
The phrase "talent pipeline" entered corporate vocabulary in the late twentieth century, completing the word's journey from a unit of precious metal weighed on a balance to a human resource flowing through an organizational system. McKinsey & Company's 1997 report "The War for Talent" cemented the word as the dominant metaphor for human capability in business.4