Late blooming genius

The latest issue of Wired has an article that really got my attention. The full article is to be available on the web July 11.

What Kind of Genius Are You?

A novel theory suggests that there are two distinct types of creativity – quick and dramatic, or careful and quiet.

In the fall of 1972, when David Galenson was a senior economics major at Harvard, he took what he describes as a "gut" course in 17th-century Dutch art. On the first day of class, the professor displayed a stunning image of a Renaissance Madonna and child.

"Pablo Picasso did this copy of a Raphael drawing when he was 17 years old," the professor told the students. "What have you people done lately?"

It's a question we all ask ourselves. What have we done lately? It rattles us each birthday. It surfaces whenever an upstart twentysomething pens a game-changing novel or a 30-year-old tech entrepreneur becomes a billionaire.

...

What he has found is that genius – whether in art or architecture or even business – is not the sole province of 17-year-old Picassos and 22-year-old Andreessens. Instead, it comes in two very distinct forms, embodied by two very different types of people. "Conceptual innovators," as Galenson calls them, make bold, dramatic leaps in their disciplines. They do their breakthrough work when they are young. Think Edvard Munch, Herman Melville, and Orson Welles. They make the rest of us feel like also-rans. ...

Then there's the second character type, someone who's just as significant but trudging by comparison. Galenson calls this group "experimental innovators." ...

Galenson is an economist, applying economic theory to the percieved value of artist's work through their lifetime, but as he applies his understanding to other areas, the trend seems to continue. Like most economic theories, this is a tendency, not a hard-and-fast rule. Over time, he has refined his theory to make it less either/or, and to reflect that Conceptual Innovators and Experimental Innovators are the extremes of a continuum.

I too have wondered if I should have already achieved some pinnacle of success. I'm not unsuccessful in my job, but had I done things differently, could I have ended up like the founders of Yahoo! or Google? Or is it not in my nature to be an early innovator, but instead to experiment and refine and establish better habits until the day when my genius is fully formed?

The article concludes with a dose of reality:

Of course, not every unaccomplished 65-year-old is some undiscovered experimental innovator. This is a universal theory of creativity, not a Viagra for sagging baby boomer self-esteem. It’s no justification for laziness or procrastination or indifference. But it might bolster the resolve of the relentlessly curious, the constantly tinkering, the dedicated tortoises undaunted by the blur of the hares. Just ask David Galenson.

Read the whole article on the web when it comes out, or pick up a copy and read along. I'd love to have a discussion about this. Just click on the "Comments" link below this article and let me know what you think.