There is a common view that invention is the province of the young. For an interesting discussion of this see Age and Great Invention, where some contrary evidence is also presented. Reflecting on observation of my peers and my own experience:
1) I believe that the dissemination of any invention is much harder today
2) However, the capacity for meaningful social innovation grows with age
The reasons, I think, are largely social.
The big change over the last fifty years or so has been the huge expansion of global research activity. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. Of course, it is good to have more research. However, it is also more difficult for ideas to become widely adopted. That may seem paradoxical, but lies at the heart of my observations.
If you reflect on the scale of research today, in terms of the sheer number of persons involved, then it is clear where the social friction comes from. There is a tendency in social systems towards a Winner–Take–All mentality. In the field of ideas, that is very problematic. Crafting a Win–Win Outcome is hard — perhaps impossible.
Perhaps the best analogy I can think of is the network law due to Bob Metcalfe:
The economic value of any network of N members goes as the square of N.
Allow me to introduce Jones’s First Law of Academic Fractiousness:
The bitterness and intensity of Academic disputes and in–fighting goes as the square of the number of Academics involved.
This does not make any individual Academic a bad person. They are not. It is just that the Laws of Economics predict an Almighty Bun-Fight at the End of Time.
Folks better hope that nobody ever finds a Final Theory or the resulting priority dispute may spin the Earth clean off its axis! It would be Academic Ragnarök.
Returning to points 1) and 2) my summation is simple:
Innovate while you are young then spend the rest of your life explaining what on Earth it was you did. Embrace the second part since it will make you a better person.
That seems to be the general rule and pattern of life nowadays.
Perhaps this seems cynical, but then part two — learning how to introduce something useful to society — is good for the soul. It is all about framing: “What’s in it for me?” on a genuine basis of mutual engagement. This happens to be great training for starting any business and so is very useful indeed.
To paraphrase Jessica Rabbit: Academics are not bad, they just behave that way.