Older and Wiser: Expanse of Knowledge Delays Big Ideas

Germany Celebrates Einstein Anniversaries

A new study of Nobel Prize winners and great inventors suggests top innovators are older today than they were a century ago.

"I find that the age at which noted innovations are produced has increased by approximately 6 years over the 20th Century," says Benjamin Jones of Northwestern University. "Innovators are much less productive at younger ages."

Jones figures that the accumulation of knowledge over time -- all that stuff that most of us don't know -- means even great minds need to spend more time educating themselves before they can make a breakthrough.

That means the squeeze is on to produce great work, the survey shows.

"Individual innovators are productive over a narrowing span of their life cycle, a trend that reduces -- other things equal -- the aggregate output of innovators," Jones writes.

The research was presented this month as a working paper by the non-profit National Bureau of Economic Research.