A friend told us about the worrying done by one of his daughters. Comparing herself to a sibling, the girl often said: "She's cleverer than me." His response was to say that both of them were clever, but at different things. One was gifted academically; the other was a talented artist and singer.

It was a state of affairs the girls used to mutual advantage, supporting each other by exchanging homework tasks to get better marks.

Our friend didn't condone that, but at the same time was pleased with their ingenuity at working with the resources available to achieve the best results. Both wanted to leave school; and he told both they could, so long as they had a viable alternative way of living their lives. They both stayed on and got degrees.

A thread runs through the life stories of some of the most famous people whose business acumen and talent touches our lives today; the use of innate talent to do something that wasn't - and maybe still isn't - taught in school.

In all sorts of diverse fields, people who stepped away from education went on to be known internationally for their achievements. Some knew what they wanted to do; others had no idea.

Singer Aretha Franklin left school when she became a mum in her mid-teens, boxer George Forman could never have learned to fight in school, and even Babe Ruth, arguably the best baseball player of all time, was in the right place at the right time to develop his prodigious talent. It's said that the first time he saw the inside of a major league baseball stadium was when he was playing in it.

Sir Richard Branson went into business selling records, but his company name is now attached to a business empire including an airline, credit cards, and internet service provision.

Walt Disney, Ray Kroc and Harland David Sanders, the latter shown in the statue in our picture, had no idea what they wanted to do - except that they didn't want to be in school. The first two became ambulance drivers in the army, having lied about their age to enlist. Everyone knows what Disney eventually did; Kroc applied his business acumen to McDonald's to set it on the way to being an international business, and Sanders did all kinds of things to support his family, including starting a ferry company and working as a farmhand before opening a petrol station. There he started selling food, including fried chicken. He was over 60 years old before his food franchise, now known as KFC, was born.

Olayinka Alege

Author Charles Dickens left school when he was 12, and went to work 10-hour shifts in a factory making boot polish, but had a writing talent that allowed him to become a reporter and then editor, which grew into his lasting fame as a novelist and creator of wonderful characters with some very odd names. Quentin Tarantino couldn't learn to be a film director in school, but his determination made it happen nonetheless.

Less well-known figures who've done OK for themselves are Francois Pinault, who left school because he was taunted and bullied about his poor background, but now owns some of the world's most famous fashion houses. Jim Clark, who developed Netscape, is now 67 and has been programming for most of his adult life. Allied to his technical skills, knowing where to invest has been a huge help in building his fortune - he's a major shareholder in Apple.

Some of these people knew what they wanted to do when they left school; others had no idea. John D Rockefeller left school only weeks before he was due to finish and graduate, but only so he could go to a different school. He valued education very highly, and pumped money into making sure young people could benefit from it.

These people are linked by hard work, some good fortune and dedication. For them, it worked out, but there are no guarantees that anyone turning their back on formal education is on the way to a wildly successful career. On the other hand, there must be hundreds of thousands for whom it didn't work out. David Karp, who sold Tumblr to Yahoo for a reported billion dollars, is quoted by Associated Press as having said: "That is not a path I would haphazardly recommend to kids out there. I was in a very unique position of knowing exactly what I wanted to do at a time when computer science education certainly wasn't that good in high school in New York City."