When I ask audiences who wants to live to 100, most hands go up. When I add \u201cno matter what,\u201d most of those hands drop.<\/p>\n
That reaction captures both the promise and the peril of what I call the longevity revolution. For the first time in human history, tens of millions of us can reasonably expect to live into our 80s, 90s, and beyond\u2014yet we\u2019ve barely begun to innovate for what those extra decades should look\u00a0and feel\u00a0like.<\/p>\n
Throughout most of human history, average life expectancy at birth hovered somewhere in the mid\u201120s. Most people didn\u2019t age; they died. Even in 1787, when John Hancock was considered \u201cvery elderly\u201d at 50,\u00a0and Alexander Hamilton wore a white wig to look old, even though he was a mere 32, the average\u00a0life expectancy in the young United States was just 37. The medical breakthroughs of the 20th century\u2014public health departments,\u00a0vaccines, antibiotics, sanitation, lifestyle medicine\u2014changed that trajectory. Now AI, genomics, CRISPR, focused ultrasound, and continuous monitoring are poised to extend both life span and health span even further.<\/p>\n
But our systems, products, and mindsets are still built for a short\u2011life world.<\/p>\n
In the U.S. today,\u00a080 million\u00a0people are over 60. Globally, that number is on the order of a billion. Yet we\u2019ve designed everything from traffic lights and office chairs to financial plans and healthcare around younger bodies and shorter lives. Medicare was created to pay doctors, not to keep older adults healthy. Most American medical schools ensure that every student rotates through pediatrics; far fewer require a dedicated geriatrics rotation. Our healthcare professionals are good people doing their best\u2014but many are winging it when it comes to the fastest\u2011growing segment\u00a0and most complex\u00a0of their patient base.<\/p>\n
That misalignment is not just a social challenge. It is one of the biggest under\u2011leveraged innovation opportunities of our time.\u00a0Although we\u2019re being led to believe that the new frontier is AI, it may actually be longevity.<\/p>\n
Consider dementia, the condition people fear most when I ask what worries them about living longer. A large share of those who survive to advanced ages may have decent hearts and kidneys\u2014but still face many years with significant cognitive decline. The financial and emotional costs are staggering. Unless we find ways to prevent, delay, or end this disease, it will become the economic and spiritual sinkhole of the longevity era. That should be a clarion call for innovators in\u00a0AI,\u00a0diagnostics, therapeutics, housing, robotics, caregiving, and financial protection.<\/p>\n
Or what about other extraordinary new technologies? Take my own experience. Two and a half years ago, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Because I\u2019d been advising the Focused Ultrasound Foundation, I knew\u00a0a great deal\u00a0about high\u2011intensity focused ultrasound\u2014HIFU\u2014which uses converging sound waves to destroy tumors without incisions,\u00a0chemotherapy\u00a0or radiation. My procedure lasted eight minutes. I was back at my desk that afternoon and have been cancer\u2011free ever since. It\u2019s reimbursed by Medicare, yet most people have never heard of it. Our problem is not just a lack of breakthroughs. It\u2019s a failure to\u00a0promote,\u00a0integrate and scale the breakthroughs\u00a0that are swiftly emerging.<\/p>\n
Then there is time itself. For the first time in history, large numbers of people in their 60s,\u00a070s\u00a0and 80s\u00a0are experiencing what I call \u201ctime affluence\u201d\u2014decades of relatively healthy life with no clear script. When financial advisors ask someone in their 60s, \u201cAre you looking forward to winding down and retiring?\u201d they\u00a0may be\u00a0asking the wrong question. A better one\u00a0may be, \u201cWhat are your new dreams?\u201d<\/p>\n
We need to stop thinking of later life as a\u00a0disappearing act\u00a0and start seeing it as a new stage with its own\u00a0possibilities and\u00a0ambitions.\u00a0When astronaut turned senator John Glenn announced he was going back up into space at 77, he told me, \u201cJust because I\u2019ll be 77 doesn\u2019t mean I still don\u2019t have dreams.\u00a0Maybe you take up the piano at 80. Maybe you start a business at 67. Maybe you fall in love again after being widowed or divorced. Our products, workplaces, and financial tools have not caught up to that reality.<\/p>\n
The opportunity spans every sector of the longevity economy:<\/p>\n
Health: Precision wellness, user\u2011friendly navigation through a maze of devices, apps, and tests, and age\u2011friendly systems that match health span to life span.<\/p>\n
Finance: Solutions that prioritize guaranteed income, rising healthcare\u00a0and long-term care\u00a0costs, and peace of mind over aggressive growth\u2014especially for women, who live longer and are increasingly financial decision\u2011makers.<\/p>\n
Work: Five\u2011generation workforces that tap older adults as talent, mentors, and innovators instead of nudging them to the sidelines.<\/p>\n
Purpose: Platforms that connect older adults to roles that matter\u2014to families, communities, and causes\u2014because usefulness, not youthfulness, is what most people crave.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve watched every U.S. presidential debate for the past twenty years. I\u2019ve heard almost no serious discussion about how to harness the extraordinary concentration of wisdom, experience, and resilience\u00a0of\u00a0our older population. It\u2019s as if we told\u00a0everyone over 65, \u201cYou\u2019re done. Enjoy yourself,\u201d and then wondered why our systems are strained and our communities feel frayed.<\/p>\n
Seventy years ago, John F. Kennedy and Sargent Shriver launched the Peace Corps, tapping the idealism and energy of young adults. Today we need the equivalent for older adults\u2014an \u201cElder Corps.\u201d It doesn\u2019t have to be strenuous: a half\u2011day a week tutoring, mentoring, helping families, supporting climate resilience, or reducing loneliness. The point is simple: as people grow older, they don\u2019t just need our help. We need theirs\u00a0too.<\/p>\n
Language matters here. Many people tell me \u201caging\u201d sounds heavy, while \u201clongevity\u201d feels aspirational. Longevity suggests a\u00a0new\u00a0horizon\u2014a chance not only to live longer, but to grow, contribute, and imagine new possibilities over a longer arc of life. That\u2019s the mindset shift business and policy leaders must make.<\/p>\n
We stand at the threshold of a longevity revolution that has never happened before. We can muddle through with 20th\u2011century systems stretched over 21st\u2011century lives\u2014or we can see this as the innovation challenge of a generation.<\/p>\n
The longevity economy is not a niche \u201csenior\u201d market. It is the new mainstream. The question is whether we will treat added years as a problem to be managed, or as a canvas on which to design entirely new ways of living, working, and caring\u2014for ourselves and for one another.<\/p>\n
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When I ask audiences who wants to live to 100, most hands go up. When I add \u201cno…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[304066,1725,64,63,137,500,10485],"class_list":{"0":"post-627331","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-250-years-of-innovation","9":"tag-aging","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-health","13":"tag-healthcare","14":"tag-longevity"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}