Ageing and Innovation

Abstract

Beyond concerns for ‘older’ individuals as users of innovation, a focus on age, ageing and innovation within the field of management and organisation studies (MOS) creates avenues of inquiry on how ‘older’ workers or entrepreneurs can contribute to innovative products and processes. To date, much of Western based knowledge (re)produces grand narratives which essentialise and universalise the ‘older’ worker/entrepreneur into a stereotype that positions these ‘older’ individuals as incapable of being innovative or contributing to innovative processes. Similarly, ‘older’ workers are often compared to ‘younger’ workers, (re)creating an age-dependent individual as the norm against which innovation possibilities are measured. This entry considers what we know about age and ageing in organisations as these concepts and contexts relate to innovation as work/entrepreneurship responsibilities. In the process, this entry raises chronological, time-dependent assumptions to the reader’s attention, inviting them to deconstruct such notions while opening avenues of inquiry within MOS. Keywords: age and ageing, discourses, entrepreneurs, human resource management, materially discursive, discriminatory practices.