Kellogg School of Management economist Benjamin F. Jones analyzed the backgrounds of Nobel Prize winners and other great achievers of the 20th Century. He collected data on the age at which an inventor made his or her first discovery, the average age at which a scientist made his or her greatest accomplishment and the productivity lifespan of innovators and scientists.
Jones found that the average age at which Nobel laureates performed their prize-winning work, and the average age at which inventors had their great achievement, were both 39. The largest mass of great innovations in knowledge came in an inventor’s 30s (42%), but a substantial amount also came during their 40s (30%), and some (14%) came beyond the age of 50. Curiously, Jones found that the average age of innovators is rising. Over the last century, the average age of greatest achievement for both Nobel Prize winners and great tech inventors rose by about six years. Since 1985, it was 45. In fact, in both physics and chemistry during the past two to three decades, very little Nobel Prize–winning research has been done before age 40.
Vivek Wadhwa
Vivek Wadhwa is vice president of Academics and Innovation at Singularity University and Arthur & Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University. His other academic appointments include Harvard, Duke and Emory Universities as well as the University of California Berkeley.
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Jones also looked at another group: “ordinary inventors.” The mean age at which they filed their first patent was 31.
”There’s a longstanding view that innovators are most productive early in their lives,” said Jones during an e-mail exchange, “Empirical evidence suggests that this view is increasingly incorrect.”
One exception in recent times, said Jones, has been a small set of information and computing technologies in which a few young people have made breakthroughs. But Jones argues that it is not as much the case in medicine, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, chemical engineering, nanotechnology, clean energy or any other field.
It may well be the only people who are really set in their ways and “keep falling back on old habits” are Vinod Khosla and the old-time VCs. The rest of us aren’t too old to take risks or innovate.
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