AI is challenging conventional assumptions about age, experience, and opportunity.
Conventional assumptions tell us that innovation belongs to the young.
Young entrepreneurs seem to come from nowhere to disrupt industries, create new markets, and even change the world.
Youth is seen as synonymous with creativity, energy, and willingness to challenge established thinking.
Assumptions about age, on the other hand, include declining opportunities, resistance to change, and diminishing relevance.
But what if conventional assumptions are wrong?
What if AI has something to do with it?
In 2018, Harvard Business Review published an essay titled “Research: The Average Age of a Successful Startup Founder Is 45.”
The researchers examined the relationship between entrepreneurs’ ages and the success of their ventures.
Their findings challenged conventional assumptions.
They found that the average founder’s age for the fastest-growing new businesses was 45, not 25.
They found that industry experience is a key indicator for entrepreneurial success.
Eight years later, in the age of AI, these findings compel us to reconsider what individuals of any age or background can accomplish now.
Experience, Not Just Age
The researchers found that entrepreneurs with prior industry experience were more likely to build successful, high-growth businesses.
“Prior experience in the specific industry predicts much greater rates of entrepreneurial success.”
— Pierre Azoulay, Benjamin Jones, J. Daniel Kim, and Javier Miranda, Age and High-Growth Entrepreneurship (2018)
Experience includes more than industry knowledge. It includes recognizing patterns, making connections, anticipating consequences, and exercising judgment.
The 2018 findings challenged the popular stereotype that successful entrepreneurs must be young.
But now, the Age of AI compels us to question our assumptions even further.
What Do You Bring?
In my recent essay, What Are You Amplifying?, I explored research showing that top performers gained the greatest benefits from AI.
These high-agency individuals weren’t simply using AI to automate tasks or get more work done in less time.
They were using AI to help them think, learn, experiment, develop strategies, and explore new possibilities.
For them, AI was an amplifier.
But amplifying goes both ways.
AI amplifies the gap between those who use it to deepen thought and those who use it to minimize thought.
An individual who brings experience, curiosity, judgment, and clear intentions to AI can use it to challenge assumptions, explore alternatives, make connections, and strengthen their thinking.
When an individual brings little thought or direction to the process, AI fills the void as best it can.
Both individuals have the same tools, but not the same outcomes.
The difference is what the individual brings.
Managing Oneself
Peter Drucker understood the importance of individual strengths and self-management long before generative AI appeared.
In his 1999 essay, Managing Oneself, Drucker recognized that the traditional relationship between individuals and organizations was changing.
Individuals could no longer depend on organizations to manage their careers and determine their opportunities.
“We live in an age of unprecedented opportunity.”
— Peter Drucker, Managing Oneself (1999)
Instead, they needed to understand their own strengths, how they work, and where they could make their greatest contributions.
Drucker anticipated a world where individuals would take greater responsibility for their own futures.
Now, more than 25 years later, that future is happening.
AI and the Real Age of the Individual
AI is ushering in the Age of the Individual, which has nothing to do with actual age.
AI is more than just a powerful tool. It levels the existing playing field, while creating an entirely new playing field at the same time.
AI has disrupted many of the traditional assumptions and roadblocks that trapped individuals in the established system.
Individuals have their own natural strengths, agency, and judgment.
They also have an amplifier.
And that makes all the difference.
Something to think about…
What do you have that AI can amplify?
Which of your natural strengths do you lead with the most?
What could you do with an entirely different playing field?
Pierre Azoulay, Benjamin F. Jones, J. Daniel Kim, and Javier Miranda, “Research: The Average Age of a Successful Startup Founder Is 45,” Harvard Business Review, July 11, 2018.
https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-successful-startup-founder-is-45
Peter Drucker recommended starting with your natural strengths. The Kolbe A™ Index clearly identifies your strengths that AI can amplify. I am a Kolbe Certified Consultant. Message me if you’d like to learn more.