TL;DR

"According to the study […] there are two types of creativity that can blossom at different points in a person’s life. [1] Conceptual innovators tend to do their best work in their mid-twenties while [2] experimental innovators peak in their fifties, the researchers contend."

"[…] radical thinkers who come up with something new usually do so before they are steeped in the conventions of their field. Meanwhile, experimenters take decades of trial and error and accumulated knowledge to make unusual connections, going beyond the conventions of their domain."

Being an early computer hobbyist, I've always been both experimental and conceptual where they push-pull each other in unanticipated directions.

I would say that the common element is that they are irreverent in the sense that ideas are not bounded by what's already been done, or considered known. Early in life, it's merely lack of exposure. Later it's having got good at recognizing various thinking boxes and practicing thinking outside them.

It takes 25 years until you've made all the mistakes in your experiments and can start making new ones. :)

It's like embedded electronics engineers. I don't know of a good one that doesn't have a very grey beard.

What about those of us that do both?

Those people all comment on Hacker News.

> They determined peak creativity by the point at which the subjects’ scientific papers had the most citations and were thus most influential

Wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that they are actually measuring popularity rather than creativity? I'd guess there is survivorship bias here since

- The study only looked at Nobel prize winners

- Experimental ideas tend to be niche, i.e. not applicable to most situations, not well explored already

creativity is a function of specialized research and work, you can be the most creative when you have the most overview of what already exists and have ideas on how to improve it

Your thinking then gets colored by what already exists so your creativity goes in the same direction as everyone else's, which is why it makes sense to split up the creativity types. So deviant creativity should peak before you establish yourself, while conformant creativity peaks when you are established, which aligns with what the article states with conceptual peaking at 25 years and experimental at 50 years old.

IMO "De Economist" is a hilarious name for a journal))

What about conceptual revolutions born out of experiments?

They are usually not led by single individuals so that's a different subject.

This seems to be true when one thinks beyond just science.

Greatest music composers tend to do their best work later in life.

Mathematicians tend to do their best work early in life.