Innovation is not a sport, it’s a set of habits and processes. It’s something that we cause ourselves to do. Harvard Business Review is right on a lot of things but they miss on this article titled “Are Most CEOs Too Old to Innovate?”. They miss badly.
The crux of the argument is that most big inventions and studies are completed before the age of 50. Most inventors do their greatest work in their mid-30s. Nobel Prizes go to people in their late 40s.
There’s an assumption built into this view that misses a big point of innovation – it’s not about an individual or a single life-changing idea. It’s about process and habit. CEOs at any age (12 or 80) drive the innovation process, it starts and ends with them. They are no longer designing or building products but they are creating a business that allows others to. They ensure that the process is moving and often play a key role in selecting the winning and losing ideas that are going to be pushed forward. That’s part of innovation.
Too often in our culture we celebrate the idea. But ideas in and of themselves are simply potential – they could be good, bad, profitable or company destroying. Sometimes which they will become has nothing to do with the idea itself but purely in the implementation of that idea into the world. Innovative thinking is often the smallest part of the cycle.