It comes as no surprise to discover in the Top 50 that “Creative Men” out number “Creative Women” by factor of 3 to 1 and that somebody from Apple (2) made it into the Top 10. Of the other players Microsoft (10), Facebook (16), Google (23) and Nokia (31) are all in the Top 50. Plus the Entertainment (36%) and IT (28%) sectors make up the bulk of the Top 50.
What I did find immediately interesting was the age bias in the Top 10. Even with Lady Gaga sitting in poll position the average age of the Top Ten is 49 Years. This suggests an aging of American Innovation. So I decided to create a generational spread of the data.
| < 35 | 35-49 | 50-64 | 65+ | |
| Top 10 | 1 | 4 | 5 | 0 |
| Top 25 | 3 | 11 | 10 | 1 |
| Top 50 | 6 | 23 | 18 | 3 |
As you can see in the table above 80% of the creatives are over 35 years of age.
A closer inspection of the data revealed:
- 70% of the Top 50 Female Creatives are aged over 50, and
- 64% of the IT sector are over the age of 40.
Both these discoveries surprised me. I expected the female “stereotype” to be more like Lady Gaga and the IT “stereotype” to be more like Mark Zuckerberg.
With an average age of 42 it would appear that, despite all the recent hype surrounding the Web 2.0 and the emergence of Social Media, the industry that spawned a generation of “Boy Billionaires” is well and truly in its middle age.
Which makes me wonder where have all the bright young minds gone? Renewables, Biotech, Banking? Certainly it’s not media and entertainment where less than 28% of the top creatives are under the age of 40.
But it isn’t just Media, Entertainment and IT creativity that are in now in their Middle Ages. Nearly three-quarters of the Top 50 are over the age of 40.
This I think represents an interesting idea – perhaps even an innovation paradox – after all aren’t the most experimental years in life supposed to be the ones before you hit 35? Isn’t turning 40 when you have your Mid-Life Crisis?
Largely thanks to Clayton M. Christensen’s 1997 classic, “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” the idea of targeting young and enthusiastic innovation teams at complex problems is now part of modern management theory. So much so that there is a popular urban myth within the Silicon Valley VC community that people over the age of 30 just can’t innovate (See The Innovation Age Bias At Sequoia Capital – Silicon Beat).
Clearly the Fast Company Top 100 Creatives in Business provides us with a set of metrics that allows us to reexamine the Silicon Valley myth of the creative young innovative startup.
Posted on June 8, 2010
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