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Arenamontanus comments on Shortness is now a treatable condition - Less Wrong
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There is one study that demonstrated that among top 1% SAT scorers investigated some years after testing, the upper quartile produces about twice the number of patents as the lower one (and about 6 times the average, if I remember right). That seems to imply that having more really top performers might produce more useful goods even if the vast majority of them never invent anything great.
Even a tiny shift upwards of everybody's IQ has a pretty impressive multiplicative effect at the high end.
Interpersonal skills are more important for job success than IQ, but I doubt great skills will produce goods useful across society in the same way as an invention does. A high EQ person probably just makes the local social network better, which has a relatively limited overall effect.
This could just reflect winner-take-all dynamics. Only a few people can get into Harvard. Only a few people can become tenured professors, only a few mentored by major figures, only a few access to resources etc. Success builds on success; if you have a patent, it's easier to get another. A small difference at the beginning (your 'upper quartile') can snowball.
I would bet that being in the upper quartile is only weakly correlated with being smarter than the rest of that 1%. No organized tests like college admissions uses straight IQ, but they do use SAT scores. That says something, I think.
IIRC, the SAT doesn't have enough questions to distinguish an upper 1/4 of 1%. At least, the reported scores don't go higher than "99th percentile".