Similar to my summer reads, after the December Holiday Season is over, when in my part of the world the cold locks in and the dark still descends too early until March breaks us free, it’s always a plan to have some winter reads at hand. Typically for me a good murder mystery does the trick, or a classic novel, or something with a Venetian backdrop, such as this year a novel – The Glass Maker by Tracy Chevalier (2024) which is guaranteed to drift me away.
However, as if it was planned that I were not to skip a beat in my reading feed on topics related to the field of ageing and longevity, now arrived in my hands is the latest from MIT Press – Longevity Hubs: Regional Innovation for Global Aging (Nov.19, 2024),a collection in twenty chapters of short essays edited by Joseph F. Coughlin and Luke Yoquinto, both at MIT Age Lab. This might serve, if you will, as a companion piece to Couglin’s 2017 book The Longevity Economy.
In this new Longevity Hubs, contributing authors (entrepreneurs, policymakers, innovators and others) from different regions around the world offer insights on what’s happening in what is called their “innovation hotspots”, covering topic areas from health care to housing, from transportation to technology, from finances to economic activity. Starting in the USA in the Boston area where MIT resides, the book flies you Japan, Italy, the UK, Brazil, Israel and Thailand and beyond.
Taking a leap from the message from The Longevity Economy book, recently in a LinkedIn post, Joseph Coughlin surmises that, “these ‘Longevity Hubs’ are proving that embracing demographic change isn’t just good for society – it’s a strategic socioeconomic advantage.” In another LinkedIn post, in a further nod to Longevity Hubs, Coughlin focuses on Asian nations, how they are “undergoing rapid demographic transition” and how this “represents a profound chance to develop new markets and rethink growth strategies”.
In 2012 at the MaRS Business of Aging Summit in Toronto, I heard Joseph Coughlin as the opening speaker and back then he spoke to how a shift in mind-set was required to address a huge opportunity, to innovate as we progress with an ageing world. I took great encouragement from what Coughlin said about what he called the longevity paradox – a call to innovate as we manage our health and invent the things we will do (or need) later in life.
So twelve years later this winter read brings me full circle. Looking forward to writing up some reviews of this Longevity Hubs book early in the New Year.
