What kind of genius are you?

This month's issue of Wired Magazine carries an interesting article by Dan Pink about a theory of creativity developed by economist David Galenson. Here's an excerpt:

"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 a second character type, someone who's just as significant but trudging by comparison. Galenson calls this group "experimental innovators." Geniuses like Auguste Rodin, Mark Twain, and Alfred Hitchcock proceed by a lifetime of trial and error and thus do their important work much later in their careers. Galenson maintains that this duality — conceptualists are from Mars, experimentalists are from Venus — is the core of the creative process. And it applies to virtually every field of intellectual endeavor, from painters and poets to economists.

As Pink writes, there's a lesson here for those of us who may be late bloomers:

The world exalts the young turks .... And it should. We need those brash, certain, paradigm-busting youthful conceptualists. We should give them free rein to do bold work and avoid saddling them with rules and bureaucracy.

But we should also leave room for those of us who have, er, avoided peaking too early, whose most innovative days may lie ahead. Nobody would have heard of Jackson Pollock had he died at 31. But the same would be true had Pollock given up at 31. He didn't. He kept at it. We need to look at that more halting, less certain fellow and perhaps not write him off too early, give him a chance to ride the upward curve of middle age.

(Hat tip to Arnie Herz, proprietor of Legal Sanity.)