Not that I know much about rockets, just that there are key talented people that push the world forward. You need the worker bees. But someone at the top has to be the visionary genius.
If was the manager of a soccer team that came in last in the League. One way of improving would be to replace my weakest players. And the team would probably marginally improve. But it doesn't usually happen that way. Chances are your best players are not talented enough either, and you should replace those too. Or Perhaps, trading two of your good players for one more talented. Which is typically what happens.
So not sure if I would agree with the premise of the article.
Also, If I was building a stock portfolio, one not terrible way of doing it would probably be around how many PhDs the companies have on the payroll.