Innovators

“The various chapters in the book offer a comprehensive examination of innovators across diverse domains.” — Riccardo Puglisi, Journal of Cultural Economics

“Innovators is a masterful, authoritative, definitive work. Galenson’s theory of conceptual and experimental artists has the distinctive revelatory quality of true insight, which is that you feel the truth of it in your bones, and the power of his ideas only grows with the proliferation of examples from across various art forms. As a novelist myself, I can say that Galenson’s ideas have helped me understand my own mind, my own creative style-they explained me to myself.” — William Landay, New York Times bestselling author

“Too often we associate creativity with the young innovator who burns bright and often flames out, and we neglect the incrementalist who keeps trying to get it right through a long career, but whose body of work may have more of a lasting effect on a discipline or art form or industry than the more familiar kind of ‘genius.’ Galenson presents detailed portraits of the contributions of a dazzling array of intellectual figures, from Paul Cezanne and Robert Lowell to Charles Darwin and Steve Jobs–all beautifully written and contributing to a convincing argument. Readers of this sparkling book will never see a painting or a building or hear a song or think of their own intellectual development in quite the same way again.” — J. Morgan Kousser, Professor of History and Social Science, Emeritus, Caltech

“A wonderful journey through the paths of human creativity. Galenson’s celebrated distinction between conceptual and experimental innovators is now applied to new fields of modern art and beyond. You will learn more about the development of great ideas, but you may also understand more about your own creativity.” — Federico Etro, Professor of Economics at the University of Florence and Editor of Journal of Cultural Economics

“After his now famous Old Masters and Young Geniuses, David Galenson broadens his pattern of experimental vs conceptual creativity. It is no doubt a fascinating breakthrough in the understanding of a wide variety of innovators, owing to a rare interdisciplinary perspective at the crossroads of economics, art history and sociology.” — Nathalie Heinich, Director of Research, Sociology, CNRS, Paris

David Galenson is Professor of Economics, University of Chicago and Academic Director, Center for Creativity Economics, Universidad del CEMA, Buenos Aires. He is the author of several books, including Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity.