In just a few years, Mark Zuckerberg has become a household name. The founder and chief executive officer of Facebook, Inc., Zuckerberg is the brilliant  entrepreneur who started the social media giant eight years ago out of his Harvard dorm room. When Facebook goes public later this year, Zuckerberg, now 27-years-old, will become the youngest CEO at a Fortune 1000 company.

The Facebook executive isn’t the only young adult to climb to the top of the C-suite; the tech boom has produced a number of young leaders. Companies like Google, Groupon,  and Zillow are all led by CEOs under the age of 40. Wall Street Journal's Spencer Ante and Joann Lublin ask if these less seasoned company heads are up to the job:

Their ascension is airing anew arguments about the value of youth in corporate decision-making. The debate typically pits the benefits of creativity and familiarity with emerging technologies against the need for disciplined decision making and experience dealing with hard times.

Management theorist Vivek Wadhwa argues that age provides a distinct advantage. Having studied over 500 tech and engineering companies, Wadhwa concluded that older founders with more experience were more likely to run successful companies. Ben Horowitz of venture firm Andreessen & Horowitz counters that risk and creative thinking are the benefits of youth and “he would prefer to bet on companies led by founders, who tend to be younger, because they are better at finding innovative products.”

While a company’s leadership may be young, many of these CEOs recognize the importance of recruiting older, more experienced talent to help steer an organization and lend perspective that a younger executive may not have. Businesses may best be served by a balance of young, innovative minds and the experienced insights.

Click here to read more about the debate between creativity versus experience in the Wall Street Journal, and share your thoughts in the comments section.