Very interesting collection of recent news…let’s connect some dots

1) Great article titled Boom time for retirees (Financial Times)

- “By 2015, boomers will have a net worth of some $26,000bn (£12,750bn, €17,670bn) – equivalent to a year’s gross domestic product for the US and eurozone combined. They will control a larger proportion of wealth, income and consumption than any other generation in the country – the first time that consumers over 50 have held such sway over the world’s largest economy.”

- “But as the boomers aged – by 2015 they will all be outside the fabled under-49 cohort – corporate America failed to grow old with them. Marketing experts argue that the continued focus of large companies such as P&G and Gap on the youth of “generation X” and “generation Y” overlooks a simple statistic: the 18-49 age group will grow by only 1m people in the next 10 years, compared with the 22.5m Americans set to enter the 50-plus bracket.”

- “The last thing the [boomer] generation needs is a company that tells them they need tools to address their lack of dexterity,” he says. “They don’t want geriatric tools, they want cool stuff.”

Main take-way: baby boomers are always “awake” and reinventing things…companies, advertisers, time to wake-up! 

Full article: Boom time for retirees

2) The article is based upon this excellent McKinsey report Read the rest of this entry »

(Thanks for the lead, Tom!) 

David Brooks writes a great column (requires subscription) in the NYT titled A Critique of Pure Reason. He expands the usual restricted understanding of “education” to incorporate a wider sense of “learning”, by discussing 

1. Where

• “The creative ones (politicians) will finally absorb the truth found in decades of research: the relationships children have outside school shape their performance inside the school.”