Innovation Grows Among Older Workers

15 Oct 2010 Sandeep Mehta

Newsweek has an interesting article about research that suggests that Innovation Grows Among Older Workers:

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.”

Somethings to keep in mind building an R&D team…

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.

Or:

One of Germany’s largest companies had a researcher examine its system for continuous improvement, expecting the findings to back up its policy of pushing workers into early retirement. The numbers, however, showed that older workers not only had great ideas for making procedures and processes more efficient, but their innovations also produced significantly higher returns for the company than those of workers in younger age groups. Birgit Verwonk, a Dresden University of Applied Sciences economist and author of the study, says the findings were so surprising for the company (which wasn’t named in the study) that it is now phasing out its early retirement program.

The take home message for me is that innovation is not tied to an age group. In fact, younger employees always need help learning the ropes (as in the case of Toyota).  The R&D managers challenge there for is to build virtual and focused communities that facilitate knowledge exchange and transfer.

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