experience at the expense of creativity?
28 May, 2008 at 5:33 pm 2 comments
My Dad has always claimed that the older and more experienced you get, the less truly original and creative ideas you are likely to come up with.
It makes a lot of sense when you think about it. As you enter “we tried that in 1994 and it didn’t work” and “well, it went perfectly well last time round” territory, truly green light type thinking starts to fade away…
Entry filed under: Account Planning, Planning. Tags: Account Planning, creative ideas, creative thinking, experience, Planning.
1. David | 29 May, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Anyone whose green light is flickering due to the onset of middle-youth may take comfort from recent research from learning and development company MaST which highlights that, when learning, under 25s produce action plans to do things better or differently, whereas over 55s prefer to learn through experimentation (75% of over 55s).
Perhaps in homage to the blog Talent Imitates Genius Steals, the over 55s group were predominantly directors and they were far more likely to try to transfer lessons learned in one situation to another (82.8% compared with 65.5% in other job categories).
Researchers believe this may be because older and more senior staff have the confidence to experiment, while younger and less senior personnel are less inclined to take risks.
So risk-averse creativity vs lets-try-it-a-different-way experimentation. And the winner is?
2. almostalwaysthinking | 29 May, 2008 at 2:36 pm
and the winner is – cross-generational teamwork?