Do mixed teams of old and experienced and young and restless employees foster companies innovativeness?

Hammermann Andrea

External Publication 7. March 2019 Andrea Hammermann / Matthias Niendorf / Jörg Schmidt at IAB Discussion Paper Age Diversity and Innovation: Do mixed teams of old and experienced and young and restless employees foster companies innovativeness?

In Germany, the labour force is ageing rapidly. At the same time, age heterogeneity within companies is rising. The literature on diversity argues that heterogeneity can have a positive as well as a detrimental effect on team outputs.

External Publication

Do mixed teams of old and experienced and young and restless employees foster companies innovativeness?

External Publication 7. March 2019 Andrea Hammermann / Matthias Niendorf / Jörg Schmidt at IAB Discussion Paper

Age Diversity and Innovation: Do mixed teams of old and experienced and young and restless employees foster companies innovativeness?

to Dowload

In Germany, the labour force is ageing rapidly. At the same time, age heterogeneity within companies is rising. The literature on diversity argues that heterogeneity can have a positive as well as a detrimental effect on team outputs.

Contacts

Our paper sheds light on the impact of age diversity on the likelihood of a company to create product or process innovations. Based on our analysis of the Linked Employer-Employee-Data from the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) over the 2009-2013 period, we focus on different indicators of age diversity within a company’s workforce (variety, separation and disparity). We find that a rise in the average age of a company's workforce has a negative impact on innovation, but age diversity measured by the standard deviation of age or the average age gap increases the probability of a company to create innovations. In addition, the uniformity of the age distribution does not affect innovativeness. Different results for age and tenure diversity suggest a higher importance of generalised human capital for creativity processes compared to company-specific knowledge gained during employment within a company.

External Publication

Do mixed teams of old and experienced and young and restless employees foster companies innovativeness?

External Publication 7. March 2019 Andrea Hammermann / Matthias Niendorf / Jörg Schmidt at IAB Discussion Paper

Age Diversity and Innovation: Do mixed teams of old and experienced and young and restless employees foster companies innovativeness?

to Dowload

Back to overview

Workplace Climate Index 2025: Employees give their workplace high marks

Most employees in Germany rate their working conditions positively. Between late May and early June in 2025 around 5,000 employees were asked to evaluate nine key characteristics of their workplace using school grades.

IW-Report No. 9 9. March 2026 Andrea Hammermann / Oliver Stettes

Trust-based working hours and quality of work

In the coalition agreement for the 21st legislative period, the government intend to regulate working time recording in an unbureaucratic manner and continue to allow trust based working hours without time recording, in line with the European Working Time Directive.