I think a useful definition of “elite” would be that you have some sort of competition the performance on which stack ranks the competitors, the top N of which

I think a useful definition of “elite” would be that you have some sort of competition the performance on which stack ranks the competitors, the top N of which are considered elite. Now, what that means in academia is pretty straightforward since academia is one big scoreboard. However, what that means at work, I’ve no idea...