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What Kind of Genius Are You?
Daniel Pink strikes again with his Wired article about economist David Galenson's groundbreaking study of genius and the very different ways it develops and manifests in people. As I've learned to expect from Pink, the article is not only entertaining and clear, but compelling and memorable, too.
According to Galenson, there are two distinct generative types: conceptualists, who make their breakthroughs early in life; and experimentalists, those whose greatest works emerge after a lifetime of study and work.
According to Galenson, notables F. Scott Fitzgerald, Mozart, Maya Lin, and Orson Welles were conceptualists; Mark Twain, Alfred Hitchcock, Frank Llloyd Wright and Beethoven were experimentalists. Clearly, some artists - like Picasso, who Galenson calls a conceptualist - have an extraordinarily long generative life that seems to span from pimples to palsy. Galenson has revised his thinking somewhat from a dichotomous to a continuous model.
Galenson has applied econometric measures to support his hypothesis. Among other things, he discovered that conceptualists' most notable works were not only created early on in their generative trajectories, but also brought record purchase prices, and are the examples most often found in art history books. The opposite is true of experimentalists.
All in all, Wired scores again with Galenson's investigation of creativity. It's a Gordian knot that defies untying, but people like Galenson help with these insights.
Get to your newstand now and get your own copy. There's a lot more there as well.
Posted on July 11, 2006 08:56 AM | Permalink
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