The youngest CEO on HBR's list of top 100 CEOs in the world is Simon Wolfsen from next, at the age of 46. According to the study of the relationship between age and innovation, even he may have reached the pinnacle of his own creativity.
As Ezekiel Emanuel in the Atlantic magazine earlier this year:
In the early days of his career, people's creativity rose sharply, reaching their peak at 40 or 45 years after work, and then stepping into a slow period of creative decline.
By contrast, the average age of CEOs on our list is 58, and the number of CEOs who are in poor health is well above the more than 40-year-old CEO. Are the best CEOs too old to be creative and innovative?
First, let's look at a study. In a 2010 paper, Benjamin Jones, from the Kellogg School of Business, counted the average age of Nobel laureates and great inventors since 20th century, and got the same results as Emanuel described.
Of these two groups, most of the innovation and groundbreaking work was done between the ages of more than 30 and 40. In fact, none of them can achieve anything at the age of 20, but only 14% of them realize their values and dreams after the age of 50.
Although the peak age varies by activity, researchers have found this type of curve in a wide range of professionals who need innovation and creativity. On the face of it, these figures suggest that the golden age of their most creative and innovative abilities will not be the same as most CEOs reach their career peaks.
But an undeniable fact is that the average age of Nobel laureates has risen by almost 10 years since the beginning of 20th century. In 1900, the average age was around 30 years, and by the year 2000, the average age was nearly 40 years. In the field of natural science, this trend is more pronounced. In the physics world, the average age of Nobel laureates is now 48 years.
This age-growing trend is partly due to the increasing longevity and ageing of the population, but it also reflects the fact that people need to be educated for a longer period of time in order to achieve breakthrough scientific results. In this increasingly complex world, management is more than ever needed for people to devote more time and effort to learning. The best CEOs are constantly learning, and the meaning of continuous learning may not just compensate for the loss of creativity as they grow older.
Of course, the CEO's job requires not only creativity, but also long and rich work experience to help them do their job as CEO. For example, some researchers have estimated that the peak age for good financial decisions is 53 years. So for many people, while they have reached the age of 50 and their creativity has started to decline, other key management skills have continued to improve. Source: http://www.12reads.cn/26160.html
Will CEOs lose their creativity because they are too old?
