Springwise recently carried the following report on a new concept targeting the 50+ Baby Boomers, who don’t want to accept they are getting old.

Brain Gymns for Boomers

Our brains resemble our muscles in one key respect: don’t exercise them, and they’re likely to lose strength. Conversely, many experts now believe that brains stimulated in a healthy manner can better resist debilitating mental conditions such as Alzheimer’s. Which begs the question: how to keep brains in top shape?

The solution offered by vibrantBrains, a San Francisco start-up, is to create a workout centre for the brain, patterned after a health club. Instead of exercising muscle groups via a series of circuit-training machines, vibrantBrains members hone their mental skills using a variety of computer software programs and other tools, for a monthly membership fee of USD 60. vibrantBrain’s health-club-for-the-mind approach should appeal to the millions of baby boomers who’ve spent their adult lives regularly visiting gyms. As they approach retirement age, they’ll want to maintain their mental agility, too, as attested by sales of Nintendo’s Brain Age, which sold 10 million copies, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

No doubt we’ll see plenty of additional products and services aimed at enhancing baby boomers’ brain power, joining a long list of companies already selling everything from vitamins to training seminars. Still, vibrantBrain’s model is unique. And from a business standpoint, it has a couple of profit-enhancing advantages over the traditional gyms that it’s based on. Space requirements are minimal compared to health clubs, and entrepreneurs won’t have to lease or buy an expensive array of exercise machines.

If the mental health club idea catches on, the real competition eventually may come from traditional health clubs, which could add brain-exercise routines as easily as they’ve added yoga and martial arts instruction. However, even if that happens, there should be plenty of opportunities for start-ups to differentiate themselves—from rehabilitative clinics for the elderly to centers focused on mental and physical exercises for kids.

Website: www.vibrantbrains.com

One of the issues we are tracking closely at TomorrowToday is the ageing Boomer generation, and the impact they are likely to have on the workplace, on retirement (we prefer to call it retyrement) and society as a whole. Here is a great piece I saw recently in an online mag called S+B (Strategy and Business). Read the original here, or scroll down.

How to Be a Demographic Realist
by Lord Andrew Turnbull
 
11/08/07

To prepare for the implications of aging populations, individuals, organizations, and society as a whole must confront assumptions that are no longer valid.

Across the developed world, the demographic profile is changing. According to United Nations projections, the proportion of the global population over 65 years old will triple between now and 2100, from 7 percent to 21 percent. The population is aging more rapidly in some countries, such as Italy and Japan, and less rapidly in others, such as the United States and the United Kingdom. But in all countries, this demographic shift raises challenging new questions, not just for retirement and how it is to be financed, but also for the world of work — and the transition between the two.

Although most people understand that this change is taking place, they do not realize how large it will be and what its implications are for our working lives, for how we provide in advance for retirement, and for how support and care will be provided and funded in the future.

Continue reading ‘Face the facts… about ageing workforces’

This was the title of a recent Deloitte’s conference. A report from MarketWatch can be found here. The focus was on trying to understand the impact of the Boomer generation on the real estate markets over the next few years.

“Don’t call them aging, don’t call them seniors and certainly don’t offer them early-bird specials,” said Neale Redington, national director of hospitality practice at Deloitte & Touche LLP. They don’t like it, he said. For good reason.

After all, this is a generation that expects to work past the traditional retirement age, said Paul D. Prescott, the national director for Deloitte Tax LLP’s home-building sector. It’s also a generation with active, healthy lifestyles that are in turn helping them live longer.

Continue reading ‘The Aging Population: The Impact on the U.S. Real Estate Market’