Tip
Chip Conley talks about brain science and collaboration: “A younger brain has fluid intelligence—tends to be fast and focused, really good at problem solving, very good at linearity in terms of looking at things. As you get older, the brain shrinks a little bit and you have crystallized intelligence. You’re going from left brain to right brain more adeptly. There’s a little less focus, a little more holistic thinking, systemic thinking, connecting the dots. You can imagine that on a team when you have older brains connecting the dots, thinking broadly, peripherally, younger team members being really fast and focused—that combination can either be successful or not. When it’s successful, it’s brilliant.”
Turns out AI team composition works the same way.
You’re staffing your AI research team. You have two candidates for a senior role. One is 29, PhD from Stanford, published at NeurIPS, can implement any architecture from scratch, thinks in mathematical proofs. The other is 48, industry background, less cutting-edge on techniques but has shipped 15 production AI systems, knows where models fail in practice, sees connections across use cases.
Younger hiring managers default to the 29-year-old. Technically brilliant, fast, focused. The 48-year-old seems slower, less sharp on the latest papers. But you’ve built enough teams over decades to know: the best teams aren’t all fast-focused linear thinkers. You need people who connect dots across domains.
The 29-year-old will solve the specific optimization problem brilliantly. The 48-year-old will notice that this problem is structurally similar to three others you solved last year, or recognize that the real bottleneck isn’t the model—it’s the data pipeline no one’s looking at. They’ll ask “why are we solving this?” before diving into “how do we solve this?”
Younger leaders optimize for individual technical brilliance. You know better. You’ve watched enough teams over decades to recognize: homogeneous teams move fast on known problems but miss peripheral threats. The 48-year-old who’s lived through three AI winters, worked in five industries, and shipped products to actual users—they see patterns the 29-year-old can’t see yet because they haven’t lived long enough.
This judgment—knowing which cognitive diversity strengthens teams—comes from watching enough homogeneous teams hit walls repeatedly. All fast-focused thinkers ship impressive solutions to the wrong problems. All systems thinkers debate forever and never ship. The magic is the combination. That pattern recognition lets you staff for complementary thinking styles, not just peak individual capability.
Context
Chip Conley joined Airbnb at 52 in a company where average age was 26. He researched neuroscience to understand why intergenerational collaboration works: younger brains excel at focused, linear problem-solving (fluid intelligence) while older brains excel at pattern recognition, holistic thinking, and connecting dots across domains (crystallized intelligence).
Teams that combine both cognitive styles outperform homogeneous teams. For experienced executives building AI teams, this isn’t theoretical—you’ve watched enough teams over decades to recognize when cognitive diversity (age, background, thinking style) creates breakthrough insights versus when homogeneity creates blind spots.
That wisdom comes from seeing both patterns repeatedly.