EXPERIENCE AND CREATIVITY
Two of the most enduring (and frankly annoying) myths is that a) creativity is the provenance of youth and b) experience equates to inflexibility.
There is a growing body of evidence to suggest that creativity is age agnostic and occurs at any time of life. Moreover, when we focus on the ability to deliver creative solutions to real world issues, then age starts to win out over youth.
Shocking right? Only if you’re under 40 and full of hubris. The reason for real world improvements in creativity is both physiological and circumstantial. Studies in neuroscience have shown that younger adults tend to approach cognitive functions from one hemisphere or the other whilst older adults bring both hemispheres into play.
The circumstantial element in creativity is ‘experience’. Far from being an inescapable rut, experience provides a data bank of patterns and metaphors which are recombined to create insights that simply wouldn’t be possible without a multiplicity of reference points.
We have a tendency to conflate risk-taking with creativity. However, a rush of blood to the head is not the same thing as brilliance. Whilst it is true that older people tend to be more cautious, this does not make them less creative. It is the young who tend to see the world as black and white and become drawn to simplistic solutions, older people are better able to resolve contradictions, detect nuance, see the big picture and understand why some things ‘ain’t necessarily so’.
Employers need to challenge the received ‘wisdom’ that youth equates with fresh thinking and marketers need to recognise that simplistic communications just look dumb to an older audience.
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