As the primary resource, talents, especially the strategic talent force, play an increasingly prominent supporting role in enterprise innovation activities. However, despite the remarkable progress made in the construction of talent teams across various industries, the cultivation and utilization of the strategic talent force are still in the long - term exploratory stage. A large number of enterprises still have no understanding of the overall picture of the strategic talent force and lack systematic theoretical guidance on how to cultivate relevant talents. Regrettably, the current theoretical research on the competency structure and development laws of the strategic talent force is still in its infancy. Existing studies have carried out some exploratory work on deconstructing the competency structure of the strategic talent force, but their focus has been on describing the morphological characteristics of talent competency elements. Questions such as what differences exist in the competency structures of different types of strategic talent forces and what development trajectories the elements in a specific competency structure follow still remain to be answered. Therefore, this study, on the basis of clarifying the competency configurations of two types of strategic talents, strategic scientists and outstanding engineers, maps the evolution of their competencies with individual growth, thus providing new insights for cultivating competencies required for strategic talents.

We conducted semi-structured interviews with 34 top experts from a central state-owned enterprise. These interviews required respondents to recall 1-3 behavioral events of themselves or high-level talents around them in the process of achieving significant accomplishments, solving major problems, leading major projects, as well as 1-3 typical experiences of their own growth and participation in talent cultivation. Subsequently, adopting the programmatic grounded theory, we refined the typical competencies of strategic scientists and outstanding engineers, and the processes and mechanisms of the competencies’ formation.

The study finds that: (1) Strategic scientists possess competencies such as a commitment to scientific truth, a noble scientific mission, a strategic scientist identity, advanced theoretical insights, and exceptional exploration abilities; outstanding engineers possess competencies such as practical engineering qualities, ambitious engineering goals, an outstanding engineer identity, forward-looking engineering insights, and excellent practical skills. The competency configurations of strategic scientists and outstanding engineers exhibit heterogeneity, with the former serving scientific discovery and theoretical innovation, while the latter serves engineering practice and industrial development; (2) The evolution of the competency configurations of strategic scientists and outstanding engineers includes five core stages: enlightenment, education, career initiation, career development, and career emergence. (3) The differences in the competency configurations lead to varying key factors and pathways in their corresponding evolutionary contexts. Moreover, the development of competencies demonstrates dynamic characteristics of sequential integration and presents an evolutionary form of multiple parallel pathways.

The theoretical contributions of this study can be summarized in three aspects: First, unlike previous studies that focused on depicting the profile of a single type of strategic talents, this study deconstructs and contrasts the competency configurations of scientists and engineers, by considering the context distinction of talents. Second, differing from studies on talent development, this study goes beyond merely observing the individual development of strategic talents and, by considering the dynamic characteristics of competencies, delves deeply into the underlying trajectory of competency evolution. Third, in terms of theory, this paper combines the longitudinal perspective of career theory with the lateral perspective of competency theory, fostering dialogue between these two talent-focused theories.