Head­ing to Dubai today (a 15-hour direct flight!), com­ing back to San Fran­cisco next Monday.

Last year I wrote about this remark­able new ini­tia­tive by the World Eco­nomic Forum here (pro­posal) and here (reflec­tions, emerg­ing dis­cus­sion). This year’s update:

• Overview: Net­work of Global Agenda Councils
• List of Coun­cils: Here
• List of Mem­bers: Here
• Mem­bers of Age­ing Soci­ety Coun­cil: Here
• Info on 2009 Sum­mit: Here
• Report from 2008 Sum­mit: Here (opens PDF in new window)

Twit­ter: #WEF­Dubai. Will tweet dur­ing the event, and blog about it next week.

(Please note that this is my per­sonal take at the dis­cus­sions that took place in Dubai as part of the Global Agenda Coun­cil on the Chal­lenges of Geron­tol­ogy put together by the World Eco­nomic Forum, and builds on the work of my col­leagues, but it does not rep­re­sent a for­mal doc­u­ment or state­ment of posi­tion. Sim­ply put, we would like to engage your brain in defin­ing the chal­lenges and outlining/ exe­cut­ing the solutions).

Con­text: The Chal­lenges of the Aging Society

The world is aging. This is occur­ring in two ways: through shifts in the age struc­ture that will even­tu­ally lead to many more peo­ple reach­ing older ages than ever before, and through con­tin­ued suc­cess in extend­ing life. Less than 100 years ago, life expectancy was between 30 to 40 years. Today, close to 800 mil­lion cit­i­zens are 60 and over.

And aging in health­ier ways. Aging has incor­rectly been asso­ci­ated with decline and decay, when in fact many peo­ple live healthy into older ages. There has been a syn­chro­nous exten­sion in life expectancy and qual­ity of life — the aver­age 65-year-old today is much health­ier, phys­i­cally and men­tally, than the aver­age 50-year-old of 100–150 years ago — when most exist­ing insti­tu­tions were envi­sioned and created.

Healthy life can be fur­ther extended with exist­ing knowl­edge. The fact is the onset and pro­gres­sion of fatal and dis­abling dis­eases, dis­or­ders, and dis­abil­ity can be post­poned using well-researched basic mea­sures of pub­lic health, envi­ron­men­tal and behav­ioural changes, and med­ical tech­nol­ogy inter­ven­tions. The same meth­ods may be used to improve or main­tain men­tal and phys­i­cal functioning.

Our health­care and retire­ment sys­tems are on bank­ruptcy track — their premises are out­dated. Exist­ing insti­tu­tions, poli­cies and atti­tudes do not reflect the points out­lined above, hav­ing been devel­oped for a soci­ety that no longer exists. We need to get on the right track: Read the rest of this entry »

Imag­ine see­ing a top sheik from Dubai, wrapped in tra­di­tional Arab cloth­ing, exclaim “Yes We Can” in front of the 800 experts gath­ered dur­ing the Sum­mit of the Global Agenda that just took place in Dubai, co-organized by the World Eco­nomic Forum and the Gov­ern­ment of Dubai. This same sheik added that “we build the future with our own hands”.

You can read more about the main points of the Global Agenda Coun­cils con­ver­sa­tion here: Dis­cus­sion High­lights. Below go some of my own still-jetlagged reflections.

The finan­cial cri­sis has made obvi­ous the obvi­ous: that we live in a truly new and global world.

And that busi­ness as usual will lead to global dis­as­ter — we need new approaches to col­lec­tively adapt to and thrive in this new envi­ron­ment. The answer is not to go back to any old par­a­digm, which sim­ply will not work in a new real­ity, but to imag­ine and build a bet­ter new way of doing things.

Some of the atten­dants urged us to “reboot” the sys­tem. I don’t think that a “reboot” is enough — we need to upgrade to a new oper­at­ing sys­tem. We can call it Planet Earth 2.0.Based on the group dis­cus­sion we had on Sun­day morn­ing, let me pro­pose some of the archi­tec­tural prin­ci­ples that should under­lie any emerg­ing Planet Earth 2.0 oper­at­ing sys­tem. Read the rest of this entry »

My apolo­gies for not writ­ing in a few days…the Global Agenda Sum­mit in Dubai has required all my atten­tion — I will sum­ma­rize the great expe­ri­ence when I land back in San Fran­cisco tomor­row night.

The con­cepts of night and day do become chal­leng­ing when work­ing for a few days in a place with a 12-hour time dif­fer­ence with one’s home base. Sleep is indeed very impor­tant to main­tain top cog­ni­tive shape…which leads me to a fas­ci­nat­ing news announcement:

Health insur­ance firms offer­ing online cog­ni­tive ther­apy for insom­nia (Los Ange­les Times)

- “help­ing con­sumers get a good night’s sleep has become a pri­or­ity for most of the top-tier U.S. health insur­ance com­pa­nies, includ­ing Well­Point, Aetna, Cigna, Kaiser Per­ma­nente and sev­eral Blue Cross plans. Their new pro­grams don’t involve sleep­ing pills. Instead, insur­ers are advo­cat­ing the use of cog­ni­tive behav­ior ther­apy. Tra­di­tion­ally, the ther­apy has been done largely through face-to-face ses­sions, but many of the pro­grams are now avail­able online.”

- “And use of sleep­ing pills has sky­rock­eted. A study this year Read the rest of this entry »

As men­tioned before, the World Eco­nomic Forum asked me to write “an 800 words sum­mary of your most com­pelling action­able idea on the chal­lenges of geron­tol­ogy”, in prepa­ra­tion for the Inau­gural Sum­mit of the Global Agenda that will take place Novem­ber 7 to 9th in Dubai.A good num­ber of Sharp­Brains read­ers and clients offered their insights — and expressed an inter­est in read­ing the draft. So below you have — a pro­posal to cre­ate a Global Con­sor­tium for Neu­rocog­ni­tive Fit­ness Inno­va­tion, build­ing on our exist­ing mar­ket research and advi­sory ser­vices work. Your thoughts?

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The Con­text

Grow­ing Demands on Our Brains: Pic­ture 6.7 bil­lion Prim­i­tive Brains inhab­it­ing a Knowl­edge Soci­ety where life­long learn­ing and mas­ter­ing con­stant change in com­plex envi­ron­ments are crit­i­cal for pro­duc­tive work, health and per­sonal fulfillment.

Wel­come to Planet Earth, 2008.

Fur­ther stretched by increased longevity: Now pic­ture close to 1 bil­lion of those brains over the age of 60 – and please remem­ber that, less than 100 years ago, life expectancy was between 30 to 40 years. The rapidly evolv­ing Knowl­edge Soci­ety is plac­ing new and enor­mous demands on our “prim­i­tive” human brains. And the longer our lifes­pans, the more obvi­ous the “cog­ni­tive gap”. Hence, from a health point of view, the grow­ing Read the rest of this entry »

I announced two months ago (Global Agenda Coun­cils: The Chal­lenges of Geron­tol­ogy) that I had been invited to join a very stim­u­lat­ing new ini­tia­tive by the World Eco­nomic Forum.

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Update (Novem­ber 2nd, 2008): my pro­posal is to cre­ate a Global Con­sor­tium for Neu­rocog­ni­tive Fit­ness Inno­va­tion. Thank you for your com­ments below!

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Next month, 700 experts will meet to drive an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary agenda cov­er­ing 68 top­ics (see below); 16 of us focused on the Chal­lenges of Gerontology.

Dubai To Host 700 Of The World’s Most Influ­en­tial Lead­ers From Acad­e­mia, Busi­ness, Gov­ern­ment and Soci­ety At First World Eco­nomic Forum Sum­mit on the Global Agenda (I didn’t write the title of the press release…)

- “The World Eco­nomic Forum, in part­ner­ship with the Gov­ern­ment of Dubai, will hold its inau­gural Sum­mit on the Global Agenda in Dubai from 7 to 9 Novem­ber 2008. The Sum­mit is a new, unique gath­er­ing of Read the rest of this entry »

Here are the dates and loca­tions of some upcom­ing events where I will be pre­sent­ing. Please intro­duce your­self if you are attending!

» Sep­tem­ber 4-5th, San Fran­cisco, CA: sev­eral Brain Health Pro­mo­tion ses­sions, at the Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging conference.

» Octo­ber 9th, Van­cou­ver, Canada: Exer­cis­ing Our Brains 101 and Nav­i­gat­ing The Brain Fit­ness Maze, at the British Colum­bia Seniors Liv­ing Asso­ci­a­tion annual conference.

» Octo­ber 11th, San Jose, CA: The Sci­ence and Prac­tice of Brain Fit­ness, at San Jose State University’s Osher Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute. (Infor­ma­tion here).

» Octo­ber 23rd, Pocatello, Idaho: Cog­ni­tive and Emo­tional Train­ing for Healthy Aging, at the Idaho Con­fer­ence on Health Care. (Infor­ma­tion here).

» Novem­ber 1st, Berke­ley, CA: The Sci­ence and Prac­tice of Brain Fit­ness, at UC-Berkeley’s Osher Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute. (Infor­ma­tion here).

» Novem­ber 7-9th, Dubai: Global Agenda Coun­cils Inau­gural Sum­mit in Dubai, orga­nized by the World Eco­nomic Forum. (Infor­ma­tion here).

» Novem­ber 17th, New York City: The Emerg­ing Brain Fit­ness Field: Research and Impli­ca­tions, at New York Pub­lic Library.

» Decem­ber 5th, San Anto­nio, Texas: The Emerg­ing Brain Fit­ness Field: Overview of Research and Tools, at the Inter­na­tional Coun­cil on Active Aging con­fer­ence. (Infor­ma­tion here).

As always, I will share the main take-aways via this blog. I hope to meet some of you down the road!

My brain is hon­oured to have been invited to participate-together with the rest of my body of course– in a new ini­tia­tive by the World Eco­nomic Forum. Of course I have accepted, given that the Global Agenda Coun­cils have this fas­ci­nat­ing charter:

- “Global Agenda Coun­cils will chal­lenge pre­vail­ing assump­tions, mon­i­tor trends, map inter­re­la­tion­ships and address knowl­edge gaps. Equally impor­tant, Global Agenda Coun­cils will also pro­pose solu­tions, devise strate­gies and eval­u­ate the effec­tive­ness of actions using mea­sur­able benchmarks.”

- “In a global envi­ron­ment marked by short-term ori­en­ta­tion and silo-thinking, Global Agenda Coun­cils will fos­ter inter­dis­ci­pli­nary and long-range think­ing to address the pre­vail­ing chal­lenges on the global agenda.”

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Update (Novem­ber 2nd, 2008): my pro­posal is to cre­ate a Global Con­sor­tium for Neu­rocog­ni­tive Fit­ness Inno­va­tion. I will keep you informed via this blog.

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The Read the rest of this entry »