To infinity... and beyond! The impact of knowledge depth and breadth on creativity over the career

While there is evidence that creativity varies across individuals’ professional careers, there is still little understanding of the reasons of this variation. We argue that this requires taking into account the cognitive process underlying idea generation, and more precisely the configuration of individual mental schemas in terms of complexity and flexibility. We propose that individuals’ mental schemas become increasingly rigid and complex as career age grows, and that this evolution affects the impact of different knowledge dimensions on creativity at different points of the career. Each knowledge dimension is beneficial when it complements the effects of career age on individuals’ cognitive processes, providing individuals with schemas that are both complex and flexible, and it is detrimental when it matches the effects of career age on cognition. More specifically, we hypothesize that knowledge depth is more beneficial for creative achievement in earlier phases of one’s career, while knowledge breadth...