A few years back I was chatting with a faculty in my field at a conference. His lab almost invariably produces outstanding graduates who are really apart from t

A few years back I was chatting with a faculty in my field at a conference. His lab almost invariably produces outstanding graduates who are really apart from the rest of the field. I asked him how did he do that, and his point was when hiring postdocs in his lab he never was really bothered about the publication counts, but he asked only one question, "What did you build in your PhD?" And if a graduate student could not answer that they were not graduating.