The shifting winds of creative thinking.

A lot of people who know me would agree that I am pretty single-minded when it comes to creativity. But now I am in two minds about it.

A recent study of Nobel prize-winning economists found two sweet spots in the age of researchers who win the prize. One group was in their late twenties and early thirties and tended to use a conceptual approach — out-of-the-box problem-solving. 1

The other group were in their late 50s and early 60s, but they utilised a different type of thinking, experimental creativity. This type of creativity is based on synthesising a career-worth of knowledge and experiences that are reassembled in different ways to come up with new ways of thinking and solving problems.

The authors of this study found that this same principle applied to many areas of creativity, the arts, and business.

This is not a new concept. In the 1950s, British Psychologist Raymond Cattell identified these differences in thinking types as Fluid and Crystallised intelligence. He pointed out that this is why older people make better teachers.

Further recent studies of start-ups have found that, while many more younger people are founding start-ups, the success rate of founders in their 50s and older are significantly better, based on the benefits of their life experiences.