… so said Peter Diamandis in his TEDMED 2011 talk (watch it below). He talks about how innovation will increase exponentially thanks to cheaper and more easily available technology. Having a common goal, an enticing motive, and being fearless helps.

Diamandis is the founder of X PRIZE and the co-author of Abundance: The Future is Better than you Think. The mission of the X PRIZE Foundation is to bring about radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity by motivating and inspiring brilliant innovators from all disciplines to leverage their intellectual and financial capital.

Who will innovate? Who HAS innovated?

• James Watson – 25 when he co-published his breakthrough scientific paper on DNA
• Albert Einstein – 26 when he published the Special Theory of Relativity
• Jonas Salk – 30 when the March of Dimes funded his polio research
• Isaac Newton – 23 when he began inventing calculus
• Marie Curie – 30 when she began investigating radioactivity; by age 45 had earned two Nobel Prizes
• Galileo – 22 when he published his first piece
• William Lawrence Bragg – 25 when he received a Nobel Prize in physics

The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible … and achieve it, generation after generation. Pearl S. Buck, First Woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature

If the above is true, why is it that NIH funding increasingly goes to older researchers?

In 2007, more grants were given to 70-year-old researchers than those under age 30.

The people who will truly innovate are those who have no fear.

What about you? Fearless?