But, as pointed out by others, PhD/academia dynamics are heavily skewed by the fact that you have to do a PhD, then work as a postgrad for ages, before you get

But, as pointed out by others, PhD/academia dynamics are heavily skewed by the fact that you have to do a PhD, then work as a postgrad for ages, before you get to run your own experiments. If you don't let anyone do anything but work on other people's experiments until they're 35, of course you won't get many great innovators below 30. If anything, the fact that the average age of academic innovators is 38 rather than 60 means that there is a large preponderance of innovations in those few years between 30 and 38, to balance out the fact that most academics in a position to innovate are older than 38. However, that's still using a fairly loose definition of innovator... arguably, people rewarded by Nobel prizes are not innovators, they're inventors. They've come up with something wholly new, and rightly deserve much credit for it. Innovators, however, are often those who take something new invented by someone else and actually bring it to the wider world. The classic example of an innovator is, of course, Steve Jobs - didn't invent any of the stuff Apple is known for, whether mp3 players, smart phones, tablets, or even the original Apple II (invented by Woz), but damn was he good at getting it market-ready and then getting people to know about it.