What I was about is called "creativity". Not all highly intelligent people are creative, but almost all creative people are highly intelligent - it must be a subset. Most jobs have a very high "routine quotient", and for these you are right - good enough is good enough. The expression about trained monkey pertains there. The fun starts when one is dealing with non-routine situations.
Yep, that's certainly true. I just have never found school performance and pedigree to be reliable indicators of intelligence. That's why I would never overstate their significance.