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14 BizEd JULY | AUGUST 2015 research+insights ILLUSTRATION BY JAMES STEINBERG Youth Not Just for the Young MANY ASSUME THAT it's the young- est workers in an organization who supply the most energy and drive innovation. But contribu- tions of the young at heart are no less important, according to a paper that explores the e'ect of subjective age—or how old someone feels—on organization- al performance. Its co-authors include Florian Kunze, chair of organizational studies at the University of Konstanz in Ger- many; Anneloes Raes, assistant professor of managing people in organizations at IESE Business School in Barcelona; and Heike Bruke, director of the Institute for Leadership and Human Resources Management at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. Kunze, Raes, and Bruke surveyed 15,164 employees from 107 German companies, whose industries spanned production, wholesale, retail, service, and finance. Employees, including those from human resources and the C-suite, answered questions about HR practices and company performance, as well as those about their subjective ages. Employees younger than 25 years old reported feeling slightly older than they actually were, while those older than 25 reported feeling four years younger, on average. The co-authors reference pre- vious studies that show that culture also can make a big di'erence in workers' subjective age. In the U.K., older workers have reported feeling nearly ten years younger than their chronological age; those in China, just ten months. Other studies suggest that younger workers think more about achieving long-term goals and promotion, an attitude that fuels more dynamic work environments. By contrast, older work- ers are more concerned with maintaining the status quo, a mindset not known for innova- tion. But employees who per- ceive themselves to be younger are often more flexible and willing to learn and embrace innovations than their curmud- geonly counterparts. They also are more focused on long-term growth in ways that can lead to stronger performance for the organization. These findings are import- ant to companies in fast-chang- ing industries that need to maintain dynamic work envi- ronments, say the co-authors. They recommend two strat- egies for leaders who wish to lower the average subjective age of their workforces. First, o'er employees more opportunities for meaningful work. And, second, avoid HR policies based on age alone, such as reserving certain training opportunities for younger workers only, which reinforce age-based stereotypes. "It Matters How Old You Feel: Antecedents and Performance Conse- quences of Average Relative Subjective Age in Organizations" was published on- line March 23 in the Journal of Applied Psychology. HEC Paris found that 25 percent of its graduates are now entrepreneurs, up from 9 percent ten years ago. Twenty percent of young graduates from pre-experience master's programs and 44 percent of EMBA participants have started businesses. Respondents shared many reasons for wanting to be entrepreneurs, but two predominate: Forty-seven percent wish to be their own bosses, and 25 percent desire to create new businesses. View more survey results at http://fr.slideshare.net/HECParis/1st-barometer-on-entrepreneurship.