Wednesday, March 01, 2006
Gladwell on prodigies and late bloomers
Malcolm Gladwell gave a very interesting and entertaining talk on Monday night at Columbia. I strongly recommend taking the hour and a half to listen to it here. Plug in your headphones and listen to it while you write email, IM, or work (that's what I did). It is worth it (besides I haven't forced you to read too much lately, so you should have some surplus time).
The talk is largely about Univ. of Chicago economist David Galenson's work on creativity -- prodigies (Picasso, American car makers, the Eagles) and late bloomers (Cezanne, Japanese car makers, Fleetwood Mac).
In addition to describing Galenson's interesting empirical findings and simple model of creativity, Gladwell makes several interesting points about society's strong preference for prodigies over late bloomers. He argues that our tastes have shifted, and it is much harder to be a late bloomer now. Gladwell thinks that this is a bad thing.
This description is massively incomplete. You should just follow the links and learn more.
The talk is largely about Univ. of Chicago economist David Galenson's work on creativity -- prodigies (Picasso, American car makers, the Eagles) and late bloomers (Cezanne, Japanese car makers, Fleetwood Mac).
In addition to describing Galenson's interesting empirical findings and simple model of creativity, Gladwell makes several interesting points about society's strong preference for prodigies over late bloomers. He argues that our tastes have shifted, and it is much harder to be a late bloomer now. Gladwell thinks that this is a bad thing.
This description is massively incomplete. You should just follow the links and learn more.
// posted by BW @ 12:31 PM 
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Certainly, it is easy to understand why a preference for prodigies emerges. Obviously, we prefer to achieve the same benefit at a lower cost.
I think Gladwell is concerned that we have gone too far. He believes that the benefits of having the best of Cezanne, Fleetwood Mac, or functional hybrids is more that worth the costs and risks associated with waiting for them to develop.
Essentially, he hears these arguments that people have to produce their works of genius when they are young, looks at Galenson's evidence on the prevelance of late bloomers, and concludes that people's expectations that someone will produce great works later in life are way too low. Because they assign a small probability to realizing the good outcome (and maybe they discount these benefits too steeply), people think that the expected benefits of waiting for someone to bloom do not exceed the costs.
However, other factors could explain less willingness to wait for people to bloom. For instance, the opportunity costs of investing in late bloomers could have risen. I am sure there are a variety of reasons this might have occured. One possibility is that identifying prodigies became cheaper, so investing in prodigies became relatively more attractive.
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I think Gladwell is concerned that we have gone too far. He believes that the benefits of having the best of Cezanne, Fleetwood Mac, or functional hybrids is more that worth the costs and risks associated with waiting for them to develop.
Essentially, he hears these arguments that people have to produce their works of genius when they are young, looks at Galenson's evidence on the prevelance of late bloomers, and concludes that people's expectations that someone will produce great works later in life are way too low. Because they assign a small probability to realizing the good outcome (and maybe they discount these benefits too steeply), people think that the expected benefits of waiting for someone to bloom do not exceed the costs.
However, other factors could explain less willingness to wait for people to bloom. For instance, the opportunity costs of investing in late bloomers could have risen. I am sure there are a variety of reasons this might have occured. One possibility is that identifying prodigies became cheaper, so investing in prodigies became relatively more attractive.
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