Daniel Pink writes for the current issue of Wired about University of Chicago economist David Galenson's excellent work on the nature of creative genius:
[Genius] comes in two very different 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 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.