Unveiling the dynamics of team age structure and its impact on scientific innovation

In the dynamic landscape of contemporary scientific research characterized by increasing collaboration, this study, leveraging a comprehensive dataset spanning six decades and encompassing 16 diverse fields with 30 million journal papers, conducts the first large-scale analysis of age structure within scientific teams. Our findings illuminate a consistent upward trajectory in the average team age over time, coupled with a concurrent decline in team age diversity. Examining their intricate relationships with scientific impact, we unveil intriguing inverted-U associations between team age, team age diversity, and scientific impact. This underscores the optimal performance of moderately aged and diverse teams in terms of team impact. Additionally, our research uncovers a U-shaped relationship between team age, team age diversity, and scientific disruption, emphasizing the disruptive potential of extreme team age patterns. Importantly, these discerned patterns hold robustly across various fields and team sizes, offering valuable insights for strategically composing scientific teams and enhancing their productivity in the collaborative landscape of scientific research.