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RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. – Former Triangle tech entrepreneur Vivek Wadhwa, now vice president of academics and innovation at Singularity University and a researcher for Duke University, is speaking out on behalf of older entrepreneurs.

Wadhwa, who is 54 and recently was called the most provocative voice in Silicon Valley, questions the tendency of venture capitalists to fund younger rather than older entrepreneurs.

In the MIT Technology Review in a topic he was asked to address, Wadhwa spells out his argument that innovation has no “age limits.”

“Young stars dominate the technology headlines. But outside the Internet, research shows, innovators are actually getting older as complexity rises,” the article’s headline says.

“Venture capitalists in Silicon Valley prefer to fund the young, the next Mark Zuckerberg. Why? The common mantra is that if you are over 35, you are too old to innovate,” Wadhwa wrote. “In fact, there is an evolving profile of the ‘perfect’ entrepreneur — smart enough to get into Harvard or Stanford and savvy enough to drop out. Some prominent figures are even urging talented young people to skip college, presumably so they do not waste their ‘youngness’ on studying.”

However, Wadhwa notes that changes are occurring.

“Given all the new complexities in the sciences, it is no surprise that innovators are actually getting older,” he says.

Citing a study that shows the average age of Nobel Prize winners in the 20th Century was 39, Wadhwa notes: “The explanation is probably simple. People are spending more time in training as a prerequisite to contribute to complex fields.”

His conclusion:

“The reality is that there is no age requirement for innovation. The young and old can both innovate. The young dominate new-era software development, and software will be a key driving force in the convergence of other technologies that are expanding exponentially. So we badly need our young. And we need our older entrepreneurs to develop cross-disciplinary solutions that solve the grand challenges of humanity.”

Read the article here.

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