In early 2018, several of our explorer circles decided we needed a sort of “manifesto”, that explained what we were trying to do, how we were trying to do it, and what our goals and principles were.
What follows is the work of this group of explorers, and includes the inputs of many individual Longevity Explorers.
Who We Are
The Longevity Explorers’ overarching mission is to help improve the quality of life of older adults (like us) around the world, as a result of a family of intellectually stimulating, socially engaging, and fun interactions.
Longevity Explorers are members of a diverse community of older adults, mostly with ages between 60-100. The common traits that members share are:
- personal experience of the process of growing older;
- intellectual curiosity; and
- a desire to explore, share, and help improve new ideas, new products, and new services that can improve the quality of life as people age.
While we started in California, we aim to be a global network of interconnected Longevity Explorer circles with a common mission.
Key Thoughts Underlying our Community
- Older adults do have some unique needs compared to other adults, but we also have many needs that overlap those of other demographics. To be useful to us, however, products must accommodate the changes that come with age.
- Older adults are a large group, with very substantial spending power.
- Older adults are rather poorly served by existing products and brands. We feel there is a great business opportunity for companies to develop products and services that meet the real needs of older adults like us.
- We think change is coming to the way people live and interact with society as they grow older, and we want to play a role in shaping that change.
- We plan to stay in touch and engage with changes as they take place in the world around us. We don’t want to live in our own separate “old people’s” world.
- We like being useful, and deriving a sense of value from what we do, and want the explorations, workshops, and co-creation that we do to be useful and valuable — for ourselves and for others.
Explorers of the Future of Aging and the Longevity Economy
We believe a variety of socio-economic and demographic factors will change greatly the experience of aging for us and for those who come after us. We know some of the current paradigms of growing older need to change. And we want to influence these changes.
We see ourselves as “explorers” of the future of aging. We want to explore new approaches to living as we grow older, and new products and services. We see the community of Longevity Explorers as a place to explore new ideas and a place where innovative people come to learn how we think about growing older, and to get help developing new and better products and services for future generations.
Activities
We aim to accomplish our mission through three types of activities.
- Exploration Club: In our regular monthly circle (club) meetings we explore new ideas, new products, and new services that show promise for improving life as we age. We also explore unmet needs, and brainstorm potential solutions to those unmet needs. Our meetings are active not passive. We tend to engage in peer-to-peer learning and exploration, rather than in “lectures”. We think it is important to hear everyone’s voice.
- Share & Disseminate: We learn many useful things through our explorations — such as which product works best in a given category; what the most pressing unmet needs are; and how to use specific interesting new technology-based products. We share what we learn with other explorer circles. In addition, when we have insights relevant to other older adults, product developers, or other generations, we share them on the web (at www.techenhancedlife.com).
- Sponsored Explorations & Co-creation: Some of the Longevity Explorers like to engage with companies who are developing products for people like us — to help ensure they develop a product that meets an important unmet need we actually care deeply about, and that we are likely to want. Longevity Explorers are eligible to be invited to participate in “sponsored explorations” organized by Tech-enhanced Life, which have the goal of helping companies bring to market products and services useful to people like the Longevity Explorers.
History
Tech-enhanced Life has spent over five years learning how to enable and facilitate this community of older adults. During that time we have run five separate Longevity Explorer circles, each for over 2 years and several for more than 5 years. The circles in California have had over 150 face-to-face group circle meetings, each facilitated by Richard Caro.
We have learned a great deal about how to make the meetings enjoyable and intellectually stimulating for the members, and how to effectively engage with companies to help them develop products that older adults like us will actually want.
Since 2018, there have been multiple “remote” explorer circles, operating around the USA, in addition to the original circles started in California. The remote circles operate under a model in which they are run by a local “leadership team” with support from Tech-enhanced Life.
We have a system in place to support the formation of new Longevity Explorer groups.
Want to be a Longevity Explorer?
Interested in becoming a Longevity Explorer? Or in getting a new circle of explorers started in your neighbourhood?