Author Archives: Paul Sloane

About Paul Sloane

Speaker, author and consultant on lateral thinking and innovation topics. Paul Sloane is the author of many books including The Leader's Guide to Lateral Thinking Skills published by Kogan-Page and Think Like an Innovator published by Pearson. He speaks and run workshops on lateral thinking and innovation topics.

13 Smart Questions for your Management Meetings

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GUEST POST from Paul Sloane

Most management meetings are dull affairs stacked full of short-term problems that need fixing. Discussions focus on routine operational issues and of course these things have to be addressed. However, from time to time you and your team should lift your heads and think about a bigger, brighter future. You should brainstorm strategic and innovative options.

The kind of question you ask makes a big difference. If you start with mundane incremental questions – such as how can we increase sales by 10% – then you will get mundane incremental answers. These often involve doing a bit more of the same – increase marketing spending, hiring more sales people and so on. If you want radical thinking you need radical questions.

Here are some questions which I use in corporate brainstorm meetings. They will generate creative and sometimes drastic suggestions.

  1. How can we surprise and delight customers?
  2. How can we double our average order value?
  3. How can we get 100% brand awareness in our target market?
  4. How can we make all our employees really proud to work here?
  5. What is the most dramatic business innovation you have seen in the last two years? How could we apply that approach here?
  6. How can we empower people at all levels to make decisions quickly?
  7. If we want to double our revenues what is the single most important thing we must change and what should we do?
  8. If we had to cut our cost base by 50% but maintain revenues what could we do?
  9. If we had absolutely no fear of failure what would we try?
  10. What are the most important rules that we and our competitors follow? What if we broke them?
  11. If we were an aggressive new entrant to our market with no installed base what would we do to become the new market leader?
  12. How can we make all our people feel and act like entrepreneurs who own the business and take calculated risks?
  13. What are the customer needs and pain points which are not being met today? What will they be in two years’ time?

Get a diverse group of people. Take them offsite. Follow the rules of brainstorming and tackle one or two of these questions. Then implement the best ideas that emerge. Great ideas are no use if you do not try them!

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Keep Faith in the Steady Progress of Innovation

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GUEST POST from Paul Sloane

The great advances mankind has enjoyed in health, prosperity, food production and longevity are largely taken for granted. But they are remarkable. Around one billion people have been taken out of extreme poverty in the last 20 years. The march of progress in technology is astounding – the computing power in your mobile phone is many times that which first put men on the moon. Science, innovation, entrepreneurship and global free trade have raised prosperity, education, and opportunity around the world. The incidence of war is at much lower levels than in previous centuries. But we have a natural tendency to focus on the problems. Bad news features in our media because it grabs attention much more easily than steady progress.

The biggest environmental problem in 1900 was not air pollution or climate change. It was horse dung. In London alone there were an estimated 300,000 horses pulling carts, cabs, and buses. The muck piled up in the streets causing bad odours and health risks. Urban authorities were unable to come up with an effective solution. But within 10 years the problem disappeared as the internal combustion engine replaced the horse.

It is not so much the big innovations that improve life as the countless incremental improvements in quality and usability of products and services. The motor car has continually become safer, more connected and more fuel efficient over the years.

We currently have significant problems with pollution, traffic accidents, and congestion. But fear not; driverless vehicles are not far away and they will deliver huge benefits in safety, cost and traffic management. Around the world, over 100,000 people die every month in road traffic accidents. Most accidents are caused by driver error and the autonomous vehicle will massively reduce the carnage as well as smoothing traffic flow and reducing emissions.

When the internet was launched it was a patchy and cumbersome resource for the technically savvy. People roundly condemned its reliability and coverage. In a now notorious article in Newsweek in 1995, entitled ‘The Internet? Bah!’ the eminent commentator Clifford Stoll rubbished the prospects for the internet and e-commerce. Among other things he said, ‘No online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.’ At the time the internet deserved criticisms but he underestimated the power of continuous improvement to fix things.

For sure people, governments, and agencies get policies wrong but eventually the systems improve. We face big challenges with issues from global warming to inequality of opportunity. Do not be downhearted.

We must continue to have faith and invest in Science, Engineering, Technology, Research and the Innovation of our Enterprises. They and the steady march of improvement are what will deliver a better future.

vintag.es

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Grow a Miracle in a Miracle Garden

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GUEST POST from Paul Sloane

I recently visited Dubai to give a class on Innovation.  I asked the hotel concierge for a recommendation of where to visit on a free morning.  He listed all the main sights but I had already seen them. He then suggested something new, the Miracle Garden.  It is a remarkable place in the Western outskirts of the city.  Dubai is well known for its bold skyscrapers, ostentatious hotels, bustling business blocks, sumptuous shopping malls and sweeping desert.  The Miracle Garden is a complete contrast – a quiet, salubrious place packed wall to wall with flowers. It is a riot of coloured blooms and glorious scents.  It contains many unexpected and incongruous items covered with flowers e.g. an Emirates Airlines plane, two cars stacked one on the other or two houses leaning together.   The jaded visitor is transported into a joyful mood.

It made me think that many a staid corporate culture would be improved by the addition of a similar stimulating place.  Most offices are routine, predictable, dull places which encourage routine, predictable, dull thinking.  Open spaces and conference rooms are all very well. They are like parks in the corporate city.  But a Miracle Garden would be quite different.  You can design your own space – indoors or out.  It might include:

  • Dramatic colours and bizarre decorations
  • An assault on the senses – strange scents and unusual music (played softly)
  • All sorts of odd items to displace and stimulate the visitor
  • Examples of some of the company’s most innovative products – both successful and unsuccessful
  • Something new and different every month

Your corporate Miracle Garden could be used by individuals who want somewhere for serious contemplation or by groups for a creative brainstorm meeting.  Its users would be guaranteed a radically different environment. They would start with a fresh mindset. This should lead to more inventive ideas.  Who knows, maybe the result could be a miracle innovation for the business!

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Why are Children more Creative than Adults?

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GUEST POST from Paul Sloane

I came across an interesting article entitled 10 Great Inventions Dreamt up by Children.    They range from earmuffs to crayon holders to an underwater talking device.  The stories of their young creators are inspiring for anyone interested in innovation and entrepreneurship.     The article begs some questions.  Why are children so much more creative than adults?  How does that creativity get crushed?  What other great ideas do children have that are ignored?

Children have the benefit of not knowing what is not possible.  For them everything is feasible. What’s more young children get praise and encouragement from their parents and teachers for almost any work they do – particularly for imaginative stories or weird pieces of art.  They have heard tales of magic and they see around them technology doing all sorts of amazing things.  As far as they are concerned every problem can be solved.  Adults on the the other hand are only too well versed in what they cannot achieve and what cannot be done.  They are surrounded by rules, regulations, laws and compliance.  They have experienced rejections, failures and humiliations.  At some stage they have worked for a difficult boss who was not interested in their ideas – just in getting the job done on time.

If we want to be truly creative we need to think like children again.  We need to imagine an ideal solution and then ask ‘Why not?’  The daughter of Edwin Land asked this question when he told her that she could not see the photo he had taken straight away.  Her persistence led him to invent the Polaroid camera.  In similar fashion 11-year-old Richie Stachowski asked ‘why can’t we speak to each other underwater?’  His invention of an underwater speaking device is listed in the article above.

Of course every invention and innovation has to exist in a world of constraints.  But if we start by imagining an ideal  solution then work back to overcome or accommodate restrictions then we will have a better chance of success than if we start with all the obstacles in clear view.  To be creative think like a child; you did it all the time once so now do it again.

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Three Insights for Innovators from Elon Musk

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GUEST POST from Paul Sloane

Elon Musk was born in South Africa in 1971. He got his first computer at the age of 8 and learned to program. At 17 he went to University in Canada and subsequently settled in the USA where he founded a company, Zip2, which provided online travel guides. Zip2 was an early internet success and in 1999 he sold it to Compaq Computer Corporation for $330m. Straight away Musk started another internet company X.com to provide online payments. It became PayPal and he held 11% of the stock when it was sold to eBay in 2002 for $1.5B.

In the same year, Musk founded his third company, Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or SpaceX to build commercial vehicles for space travel. In 2008 NASA chose SpaceX to transport cargo to the International Space Station (ISS). In 2012 SpaceX made history when it became the first commercial company to send a rocket into space carrying a payload to the ISS.

In 2004 Musk had helped fund the start-up Tesla Motors in order to produce mass market electric cars. In 2008 he became CEO and product architect. In the same year, the company launched its Roadster, an electric sports car powered by a lithium ion battery. In 2010 Tesla Motors raised $226m in its initial public offering. Elon Musk has helped shape the company’s many innovations. It was he who insisted on a carbon-fibre-reinforced polymer body. He took the unprecedented step of opening all the company’s electric car patents to outside use saying, ‘we will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.’ Unlike other automobile manufacturers, Tesla Motors sells direct to the public rather than using dealerships.

In 2013 Musk proposed a radical new concept for transportation, the ‘Hyperloop’ which would transport people at speeds of up to 700 mph through pods in low-pressure tubes. He has funded development of the idea and in 2015 he announced a competition for designs for a Hyperloop pod prototype.

He had expounded grand ideas on the potential of space exploration for the benefit and survival of the human race. To this end he created the Musk Foundation, to advance space exploration and the development of clean, renewable sources of energy.

Insights for Innovators

Think big. Elon Musk is not interested in just starting successful companies. He has a vision of space exploration for the benefit of mankind. He wants to find radically new and cleaner ways of transporting people. In his own way, he wants to use science and entrepreneurship to make the world a better place. He has set out to make a big impact. If you have a big vision then it can inspire people and give you and your team a stronger sense of purpose and value.

Bypass the normal channels. Tesla Motors sells direct to end-users. It has ‘galleries’ in shopping malls rather than expansive dealer showrooms. It makes all its patent innovation transparent and available to others. It is refreshingly different from conventional car companies and this increases its appeal to people who want an unconventional and cleaner car.

Use one success to build another. Elon Musk did not settle back after selling his first internet start-up. When he made his first millions he did not retire to a villa on the beach. He used his early successes to fuel his big ambitions. If you have an early victory then use it as a platform for further bigger and bolder ventures.

wikipedia.org

Editor’s note: This post is based on a chapter in the new book, Think like an Innovator by Paul Sloane published by Pearson.

 

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Planned or Emergent Innovation?

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GUEST POST from Paul Sloane

Most innovation initiatives are planned. We focus on a challenge, generate some great ideas and then put together teams to implement the best ones. For new products the projects might go through a stage-gate process where they have to clear certain hurdles in order to have extra resources released. There is a program and the projects adhere to it. Most people work in their departments on the current model while a handful of innovators drive change initiatives or new product developments. The emphasis is on plans and targets.
But there is an altogether different approach; emergent innovation. Here everyone (or almost everyone) in the organisation is empowered to try new things all the time. The ideas that don’t work are discarded and the ones that show promise are developed. The emphasis is on adaptability, learning and sharing.

Planned innovation is like Intelligent Design where one Supreme Being (the CEO maybe) commands that new and better solutions be implemented. Emergent innovation is like accelerated Darwinism where there is no fixed plan but lots of trial and error leading to evolution in different and unexpected ways.

Think of a playwright writing a new play. She works long and hard to carefully craft every line. Then the director and producer skilfully design a creative and dramatic production. The actors all learn their lines and the show is launched at great cost. Nobody knows for sure whether the play will be a success until it goes to market and is seen by real audiences. Maybe it will be a hit or maybe a flop. The rewards can be great but so are the risks. It is a highly planned program which has been tried before with other plays.
But some drama companies take a different approach. They use improv. The actors do not learn any lines; they improvise in the moment. They are empowered to try whatever they want. There are drama groups which produce musicals on this basis with the main themes coming from the audience on the night. Sometimes the show flops but more often the results are brilliantly entertaining.

Most companies use the planned innovation method. This has the apparent benefit that the focus and resources can be directed at chosen areas which fit with the company strategy and client needs. However firms such as Kodak and Nokia found that planned innovation does not always produce the desired results. Emergent innovation looks risky and chaotic but Google, Facebook, WL Gore and others are famous for letting smart people try new things in very agile ways.

Which approach is better for your organisation? The good news is that you do not have to choose one or the other. You can try both. You can maintain a formal program of innovation events, teams and initiatives. At the same time you can empower certain people or groups to continually try new things. Not everyone is comfortable taking risks but some of your smarter and more creative people would welcome the opportunity. Start by asking for volunteers from across the business but especially in customer facing functions. Give them broad parameters within which they can try new things provided they share the learnings.

With emergent innovation the emphasis is on fast feedback rather than fast payback. When we find something that really works we quickly swing more resources onto it. Let’s try a myriad of ideas and see which ones emerge the winners.

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Should the Manager be in the Ideation Meeting?

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GUEST POST from Paul Sloane

You want to hold a meeting with your team in order to generate some really creative ideas. You would like the group to challenge assumptions, think differently and come up with plenty of radical proposals.  Here is the dilemma. You naturally want to lead the meeting but should you be in the room at all?

Unfortunately for managers, your presence in the room can inhibit people. With you there, it is very hard for your team to switch from normal meeting mode to creative brainstorm mode. You want them to confront the current conventions and generate unorthodox ideas. But some of these hidden factors might be at play:

  • Too much deference and respect for authority (you!)
  • Fear of looking silly
  • Fear of rejection
  • Not wanting to look disloyal or insolent
  • Dislike of conflict or argument

You tell them that anyone can challenge anything and make any suggestion. They nod in agreement but they are waiting to see what happens. Someone suggests something strange and you immediately point out why that might not work.  People read the signals and you are straight back into a conventional meeting with little chance of the wealth of radical ideas you were hoping for.

What can be done about this? Here are three practical ways to overcome the problem of manager in the room:

      – Hand over the meeting to an external facilitator.   It is hard for the manager to change from their normal management persona into a creative cheerleader.  It is much easier for a facilitator to get people to think and act differently.  Bring in someone from an entirely different function or business and tell them the outcomes you want e.g. we want to find three new ways to cut waiting times and improve customer service.  Then let them run the meeting and you take a back seat.
        – Use brainstorm methods which depersonalise the ideas and encourage radical thinking.

The Nominal Method

        and

Pass the Parcel

      are two such techniques.  The ideas are pooled.  Everybody has to contribute and bizarre ideas are encouraged and mandated.  In many business meetings the noisiest or the most powerful people dominate the discussion with the lower-status people quiescent.  If you select the right type of brainstorm method you can overcome these issues and ensure that everyone contributes ideas and helps in the selection.
    – Leave the room. I facilitated a brainstorm meeting for a marine engineering company.  We started by discussing some of the key challenges and the broad types of solution we needed.  The Managing Director then left the room.  He was a very intelligent, forceful and dynamic character.  He was smart enough to know that if he stayed in the meeting he would not be able to stop himself from leading and shaping the discussions.  Two hours later he returned and we presented a short list of ideas.  He received them enthusiastically and helped define the next steps in terms of responsibilities and resources.

Ideation meetings require a different structure, culture, and process from a normal meeting.  If the manager leads a brainstorm then all too often it slips back into a conventional meeting with conventional thinking. Force some different thinking with a different location, a different approach and a different meeting leader.

yourstory.com

 

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Lessons from Four Great American Innovators

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GUEST POST from Paul Sloane

In 1912 a young scientist from New York, Clarence Birdseye departed on a fur-trading expedition to Labrador in Canada. While he was there he noticed that the local Eskimos kept their fish fresh in winter by freezing it in the ice.  He was intrigued to find that the fish retained its flavour and did not deteriorate. He wondered whether the same process could be applied to other foodstuffs and developed on a commercial scale.

Birdseye returned to the USA and worked on this idea. He developed a ‘Quick Freeze Machine’ which copied the method used by the Eskimos. The machine worked for a range of foods including fruit and vegetables. He created the frozen food industry.

lessonplans2Lesson – look outside for ideas. Solve your problem by adapting a concept that works somewhere else. Birdseye would not have produced his innovation if he has stayed in New York. He saw an idea in a completely different environment, a snowy wilderness, and adapted it for widespread use in an urban environment.

The 1970s IBM dominated the mainframe computer arena but smaller companies were nipping at its heels with mini-computers and home computers.  IBM asked Don Estridge to develop an inexpensive personal computer to take on the upstarts like Atari, Apple, and Commodore. Estridge realised that he could not create a viable competitive product and bring it to market quickly if he used standard IBM development processes.  He went outside the company for third-party components and software.  More radically, he opted for an ‘open architecture’ publishing the specifications of the IBM PC thus enabling a burgeoning industry of suppliers of add-ons, hardware and software products.

On August 2, 1985 Estridge and wife Mary Ann were killed when the plane they were traveling on crashed at Dallas. He was 48 years old. At the time of his death, the IBM PC group had grown to 10,000 employees and was grossing about $4.5 billion a year. If it had been a separate entity it would have been the third largest computer company in the world behind IBM and DEC.

Lessons – Tear up the rule book.  Don Estridge broke all the standard operating procedures at IBM in order to ship a revolutionary product in record time.  He decided that the only way to succeed was to break all the rules and move fast.  What Estridge did was heresy within IBM but it delivered dramatic results and he was applauded for it.

Design a platform not a product. The IBM PC was successful because its open architecture enabled companies and individuals to customise and adapt it to many varied uses.  It became a platform for software and hardware developers.  ry to develop something that others can build on and enhance.  With luck, they will become supporters and evangelists.

Jeff Bezos developed a keen interest in computers as a boy. He graduated from Princeton in 1986 with a degree in computer science and electrical engineering. He then worked for an investment firm in New York before quitting his well-paid position in 1994 to start Amazon, just as internet commerce was beginning to take off.  He started the company in his garage where he wrote the software systems for online commerce.  He opened his virtual bookstore in 1995. The success of the company was spectacular. Within two months of opening, sales were running at $20,000 a week and they continued to escalate. In 2016 his personal wealth was estimated to be some $60 billion making him one of the five richest people in America.

Lessons – disrupt your own business before someone else does. Offering second-hand books at low margin threatened Amazon’s higher value new book sales but this did not bother Bezos. He wanted to own that segment of the market too and to prevent a competitor from seizing it.

Anticipate customer needs. Amazon was selling conventional books but Bezos could see that some people would want to read electronic books on computers. He stole a march on competitors by developing Amazon’s proprietary e-book reader, the Kindle. It was attractively priced and scooped the market.  For a bookseller to build a consumer electronics product device was a risky venture but it paid off.

Travis Kalanick was born in Los Angeles in 1976. He enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles, to study computer engineering but in 1998, he and some colleagues dropped out of UCLA to found a start-up which subsequently filed for bankruptcy.

In 2009, Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp founded Uber, a mobile application that connects passengers with drivers of vehicles for hire and ridesharing services. The company started as a two-thinkcar operation in San Francisco and then rocketed upwards. By 2016 it had over 1 million drivers, was delivering over 3 million rides a day in 66 countries, and was valued at $62 billion. It is claimed to be the fastest-growing start-up in business history. So big was the impact that Uber became a verb meaning to disrupt and entire industry model.

Lessons – innovate with other people’s resources; especially if they are under-utilised resources. Uber does not own any cars. It is fundamentally an app which links people who want rides with people who are prepared to provide them. How can you harness the ‘gig economy’ to help other people provide a service which customers will value?

Find something broken and fix it. Kalanick had the idea for Uber when he was in Paris in 2009 and could not get a taxi. Most people would just complain or take the bus but Kalanick thought there must be a better way. He thought ‘Why not harness the capacity of all the drivers in Paris who would be happy to give me a ride for a fee.’ Wherever there is a constraint on a supply there is an opportunity for an innovator to find a new way to meet the demand.

Based on Think Like an Innovator – 76 inspiring lessons from the world’s greatest thinkers and innovators, by Paul Sloane published by Pearson.

 

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Six Reasons why Cross-Functional Innovation Teams Fail

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GUEST POST from Paul Sloane

Once you have identified a great idea for a new product or service innovation what do you do?  Many firms put together a cross-functional team (XFT) and tell them to bring the product to market.  It seems like a good approach. They have budget, people, and empowerment.  What could possibly go wrong?  Lots of things. Here are six common reasons why XFTs fail to deliver.

1. No High-Level Sponsor

The team is too junior and lacks an executive heavyweight who can authorise important decisions and clear roadblocks. Ideally, the team should report to someone in the C-suite – the COO, CIO, CMO or preferably the CEO. The dilemma is that they have to be empowered and left alone (see the next problem) but they also need access to high-level authority on occasion. The high-level sponsor does not need to attend every meeting (indeed they should not) but should be aware of overall progress and key issues. They have to step in and act when needed.

2.  Too much Oversight and Control

The team is charged with bringing a new product to market quickly but it is burdened with ponderous approvals and sign-offs every time they want to spend some money, or say want to get the production department to build a prototype or get the marketing department to do a short customer survey. They should be allowed to bypass many internal approval processes and take control of the project themselves.

3. Wrong or Unclear Objectives

Often the team is asked to deliver a finished product within a tight timescale with the emphasis on return on investment. It is generally better to aim to produce a minimum viable product (MVP) in half the time and half the budget. The objective is to get the MVP in front of customers quickly so as to ascertain their reaction and validate the concept. The emphasis should be on fast feedback rather than fast payback. Vague goals are not much help but even worse are targets which are too tight, ambitious and restrictive.  Do not set up the team to fail.

4. Wrong Mix of Skills and Functions

It is no good if the team is mainly from one department (often marketing or production). Most of the keen volunteers  may have been from marketing but you need  to co-opt people from other key functions such as finance, technical and sales. But just getting the right mix of departments is not enough. You need a diverse team with the right mix of skills.  If all the people on the team are creative types then they have great ideas but nothing much gets done. An IBM report identified 8 different skill types needed – see here for the list.

5. Insufficient Resources

The team cannot be expected to produce much if they can only meet after work every third Tuesday. They need time, space and money.  The cross-functional innovation team is not a hobby it is a high priority for all participants and they should be freed from other duties to allow them to devote the time they need to the project. One full day a week would not be unusual. This means that their departmental managers have to reallocate some work to free up the team members.

6. Opposition from Vested Interests

The biggest problem is often one that is not anticipated – political opposition from internal departments who see the XFT as a nuisance or a threat. Why should they get special treatment and faster approvals when it is our department which will have to make the thing and sort out the problems they have caused? Also surely our current products which are selling well are more important than some new-fangled idea which might never  work. This is where the high-level sponsor is needed to overcome turf wars and internal politics.

There is nothing wrong with establishing a XFT to implement an innovation project.  However, you cannot just set it up and forget about it.  They need support, direction, and encouragement.  They also need freedom and empowerment.  Above all, they need help to overcome all the business-as-usual pressures which will oppose an innovation initiative.

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How Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft Miss Creative Talent

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GUEST POST from Paul Sloane

 

How Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft Miss Creative Talent - Innovation ExcellenceThere are pervasive myths that older people are stuck in their ways, lack creativity and dynamism and cannot cope with new technology. This is reflected in ageism in hiring. According to research firm Payscale, the median age of a worker at Facebook is 29; at Amazon it is 30, and at Microsoft 33. In 2007 at age 22 Mark Zuckerberg profoundly stated, ‘Younger people are just smarter. Why are most chess masters under 30?’

Little wonder then that Bloomberg reported that 150 of the USA largest tech firms were sued 226 times for age discrimination from 2008 to 2015. There were more suits for age bias than for racial or gender discrimination.

How Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft miss Creative TalentI was recently fortunate enough to see Woody Allen play clarinet with his band at one of his occasional gigs in New York. The actor, playwright, director, and musician is 80 years old. He has made over 40 films including one this year, Café Society. Allen has won four Academy Awards: three for Best Original Screenplay and one for Best Director for Annie Hall which was named the funniest screenplay by the Writers Guild of America. He also won nine British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards. He is dramatic proof that old people can be creative and dynamic.

Of course, some older people are complacent, stubborn and technology-averse – but so are some youngsters. There is little or no academic evidence that creative achievement declines with age. Some studies show that pure creativity shows a slow decline after the age of 30 but there is a compensation with wisdom gained from experience. Many great artists, writers, scientists and business people did great work in their advanced years. Consider these examples:

Steve Jobs was 52 when as CEO of Apple he launched the iPhone in 2007.

In 1961 at age 59 Ray Kroc bought a small restaurant chain from the McDonald brothers and over the next 14 years built it into a mighty empire.

Bill Gates at age 60 is highly active in leading his foundation fight malaria.

The Italian painter Titian created some of his greatest masterpieces in his 70s and 80s.

Michelangelo remained a brilliant sculptor, painter, and architect into his 80s.

Woody Allen continues to make films and play jazz clarinet at 80.

And older people seem to be getting smarter. The average age of Nobel prize winners has increased significantly.

According to a study reported in Nature  ‘comparing discoveries made before 1905 with after 1985, the average age at which physicists made their discoveries rose from 37 to 50. Chemists’ average age rose from 36 to 46 and that of medical scientists from 38 to 45.’

As regards Chess Masters, most gain their grand-master title in their 20s. The average age of the top 100 grand-masters is around 30 and there are many who are much older. The Russian, Viktor Korchnoi, remained one of the strongest players in the world into his 80s.  The current British chess champion, grand-master Michael Adams, is 44.

It is foolish (and illegal) for companies to discriminate against candidates on the basis of age. Ability, attitude, and suitability for the position count much more.

What could a 50-year-old Steve Jobs, Bill Gates or Woody Allen do for Facebook?  Who knows?  They might improve creativity and usability.

They could lead the company into new markets and attract more users – including many smart senior citizens.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; en.wikipedia.org

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