Recently I read two good articles about ageism in innovation and entrepreneurship.
The first one, from San Francisco magazine titled “Dark side of the boom”, is really about the dark side of the youth entrepreneurship myth in the valley.
The second one, from The Economist, is about the fact that statistically older people are no less innovative or enterprising than the young.
It is actually not just about the valley or the entrepreneurship. Our cultures, especially the American one, seem to have this mysterious but unfortunate tendency to encourage early success. It is as though success at a young age is a certificate of life long achievement. Child prodigy can be a sign of true genius, but can also be a simple consequence of precocity, a premature biological cycle. Perhaps the most harmful situation is when unnatural forces are applied to fake a genius out of an ordinary individual.
Take your time; it is true that life is short and should not be wasted, but a lot of things simply need time to mature and cannot be rushed, no matter how smart you are.
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