Day three hundred and sixty-two

It’s time

The right time to write it is, therefore, this, because life has decided so and because today we lay the foundation to communicate the work that, thanks to my fantastic team, we have put in place in the three hundred and sixty two days that preceded this post.

The foundations are represented by this web space that you are visiting and that is the first step towards the new NICA website that, starting from the end of November, will tell you much more in detail about our work.

The foundations are represented by this blog which is the channel through which we will tell you our idea of innovation and what we are doing and what we will do, we hope, together with you for harnessing the business opportunities related to longevity economies through human experience, ethics, data, collaboration, emerging technologies & innovative business models.

But also, and above all, to change the narrative around ageing and longevity.

Changing the narrative

Bombarded by the explosion of statistics on demographic trends we tend to regard the phenomenon of an ageing society as a net, which after a certain age threshold, everyone is inevitably entangled.

Typically, a youthful dogmatism considers the old as a receptacle. Voracious consumers of energy, resources, time and services. The others.

But they aren’t taking into account the real economy: older adults not only as “receivers”, but also transmitters of lifestyles, of spending power, of an interpretation of reality, of present and future desires.

Between many other studies the McKinsey Global Institute concludes that the over-60 population, one of the few drivers of global economic growth, is well-placed to generate at least half of the expansion in all urban consumption between 2015 and 2030. Not to mention the economic and physical assistance they provide.

In today’s economic system, always teetering on the brink of recession, this is an economy, that spawns billions of man-hours every year (or better yet, woman-hours), although nobody bothers to count. ​

Valuing the ageing population

At the National Innovation Centre for Ageing we want to make that economy count.

To allow brands and organisations to understand how and why to serve a population off their market radar. We are here to show that people who, because of crystallised cultural stereotypes, we categorise in a single pot are actually a river of fluid lava, burning and alive, made of un-replaceable lapilli, so different from each other, so unique in their own way. ​

We are here to listen to their voice and ideas too often forgotten and turn them into a value for society as a whole.

We are here to explore how an ageing workforce can represent not a challenge for companies and people, but an opportunity for both and for the Country.

We are here to connect generations and allow them to contribute to each other’s well-being and happiness. Together.

We are here to seek meaning in process innovation and emerging technologies and apply them ethically and sustainably to our lives, regardless of age.

Introducing Ageing Intelligence^®

We are here to add intelligence to ageing and longevity. We named it Ageing Intelligence^®.

To introduce you to the journey we embarked on when we laid the groundwork for the creation of such a strategic paradigm in January, we asked, during the global lockdown, a good photographer to remotely portray 10 people around the world who accepted to become our ambassadors and share their life experience with us. And today I am happy to introduce them to you.

They and their stories don’t want to teach anything or represent any role model. They simply chose to tell who they are to help us show how much richness there is in each of us regardless of the stage of life we are in, our background, our trajectory of life. And how much intelligence is contained within each of us: think if we could ever extract it, synthesise it and share it.

Help us to make it happen. Join us.

Nic