Moving forwards into aging

The third week of September saw the second meeting of the Active Aging think tank in Boston, USA. It’s always interesting to see a group meeting for the 2nd time – the conversation moves faster, people are connecting ideas more quickly and it was great to see the think tank group building from each other’s ideas and brainstorming rapidly.

The first item on the agenda was the audience “who are the elderly and how do we define them?” We kicked off with a presentation from Carat who provided the ‘marketing’ view of the elderly – which was really interesting and also highlighted that not all marketers understand the size of the aging population and that they will have the purchasing power. As a result of the presentation, it was quite nerve racking when the agenda item on “defining the elderly” was thrown out after an hour when the whole morning had been planned for it. The group decided to revert to the WHO definition of the elderly.

The second guest speaker was really fascinating – Tom Perls who is often covered in the US media as he studies centenarians talked the think tank through “what are the ingredients to aging well and living to be over 100?” He had some really insightful findings (for example, those who live to be over 100 tend to be very extrovert and have low levels of neurotic behavior!). He also took the think tank group through a life expectancy calculator which aims to illustrate the major factors which determine how long you will live. You might be surprised to know that 70% of your own behavior and only about 30% is genetically determined. For those who want to know: www.livingto100.com

Over the course of the afternoon, the think tank developed a model for “aging well” which they want to deploy and discuss further. They agreed to focus on the two key themes of “technology and aging” and “building personal health & well-being systems” as the core of their work going forward.