Despite stereotypes of entrepreneurs as fresh-faced youngsters, new research has found that older workers are more likely to innovate than their under-35 counterparts.
|
|
Peach-fuzzed entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg, 19 when he founded Facebook, and Larry Page and Sergey Brin, both 23 when they developed Google, have created a collective image of the successful innovator as youthful, brash, and brilliant. In turn, we've been taught that with middle age come calcified habits, outdated skills, and an aversion to risk. Sounds bad, right? Hey, it gets even worse when you consider that, by 2030, the average age will rise from 37 to 39 in the United States, from 40 to 45 in the European Union, and from 45 to 49 in Japan. The implication is that such figures, plus the post-baby boomer decline in birthrates, could leave swaths of the world with a deficit in creative potential. The question then becomes whether these places can continue to compete, grow, and create wealth with an aging pool of prospective entrepreneurs and workers. According to several new studies, the surprising answer is yes.
It turns out that many of the most common stereotypes about aging are dead wrong. Take the cliché of the youthful entrepreneur. As it turns out, the average founder of a high-tech startup isn't a whiz-kid graduate, but a mature 40-year-old engineer or business type with a spouse and kids who simply got tired of working for others, says Duke University scholar Vivek Wadhwa, who studied 549 successful technology ventures. What's more, older entrepreneurs have higher success rates when they start companies. That's because they have accumulated expertise in their technological fields, have deep knowledge of their customers' needs, and have years of developing a network of supporters (often including financial backers). "Older entrepreneurs are just able to build companies that are more advanced in their technology and more sophisticated in the way they deal with customers," Wadhwa says.
And the age at which entrepreneurs are more innovative and willing to take risks seems to be going up. According to data from the Kauffman Foundation, the highest rate of entrepreneurship in America has shifted to the 55-64 age group, with people over 55 almost twice as likely to found successful companies than those between 20 and 34. And while the entrepreneurship rate has gone up since 1996 in most other age brackets as well, it has actually declined among Americans under 35. That's good news for one very simple reason: baby boomers are now in their prime, startup-founding years, which will unleash what Kauffman researcher Dane Stangler expects to be an entrepreneurship boom. Since new companies create the vast majority of jobs, the positive impact on a post-recession economy could be great.
Click here to continue reading.
