Young guns of the corporate world set to take the reins

Ben Richmond, one of today's young guns, is the New Zealand sales director at Xero.

This week the Business Herald launches a video series putting the spotlight on the young guns of the corporate world.

We're looking at the rising stars that should hopefully be leading our biggest companies and sitting around board tables in not too many years from now.

Young talent brings some obvious strengths to any team.

For starters there is a very contemporary connection with the consumer.

Younger people often seem to have a more natural understanding of how people are engaging in the marketplace and where the latest trends are heading.

They are living and breathing the technological changes in the world rather than reading about them.

Young executives are likely to be less encumbered by traditional and outmoded ways of looking at business. They are less likely to see new technologies as disruptive and challenging and more likely to embrace them as the norm.

Then there's the energy, enthusiasm and passion that comes with youth.

On the flipside youth sometimes brings with it an attitude to risk that may be too much for large institutions with large established revenue models.

There's a certain wisdom that only comes with age.

It is all a question of balance of course and it is not clear whether the New Zealand corporate sector has it quite right yet - particularly as the need for established business to take an entrepreneurial approach grows.

The Business Herald CEO Pay Survey last month showed the bosses of the top 50 companies in this country to be overwhelmingly white, male and middle aged or older.

Diversity is clearly an issue and age is just one part of that mix.

It has been an interesting process just trying to define what we mean by "young" in a business context.

Baby boomers have defined the business world for many years now, but Generation X is now heading into the traditional peak performance zone: 45-55.

Air New Zealand's Christopher Luxon is a relatively youthful boss by local standards at 44 and has been in the role for more than two years. NZX-listed Diligent's US-based chief executive Brian Stafford is 38, making him one of the youngest on the local exchange.

"Young" in a New Zealand market context isn't quite the same as, say, Silicon Valley where 31-year-old Mark Zuckerberg has been at the helm of Facebook for more than a decade.

Or the Indian tech sector where Suhas Gopinath is cited as the youngest chief executive of a multinational. Born in 1986 he took charge at IT company Global Inc at 17. He had founded the company three years earlier.

Perhaps he is at the front end of a trend that will see the average age of those at the top coming down.

There is no doubt that tech entrepreneurship is driving a change in the way we look at business leadership. There is a generation coming through that is born and bred in the internet age.

Harnessing that energy and channelling it towards wealth creation is a key challenge for the business community as we look to grow and diversify the economy.