Aging Demographics and Increased Longevity

The biggest and least understood business and personal opportunity

By Rob Chess

People age 50 and older account for over 50% of consumer spending in the US and 83% of household wealth. These numbers are expected to grow significantly due to a combination of increased longevity and the aging of the baby boomer generation. This is the largest and one of the fastest growing business opportunities both in the US and worldwide. Many business managers and entrepreneurs, however, do not consider the over-50 demographic in their plans, and those that do often do not understand how best to design products and services for this group. It is a huge missed-opportunity.

This is the premise underlying a new class at the Stanford Graduate School of Business class Rob co-developed with Laura Carstensen (the Farleigh S. Dickenson Jr. Professor of Public Policy and Psychology at Stanford, and the founding Director of Stanford’s Center for Longevity Studies), and Susan Golden (the Longevity Center’s Innovation Hub Director).

In this talk, he will share what he has learned about the longevity opportunity, common misperceptions about building products and services for those over 50, marketing and product design considerations for this demographic, and how the baby boomer generation will transform multiple industries. He will also touch on how our society’s existing “map of life” is outdated and needs to change so people, including you, can get the most benefit out of our extra years.

Rob is a serial life-sciences entrepreneur and Lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Rob is Chairman and former CEO of Nektar Therapeutics, (NASDAQ:NKTR), a health care biotechnology company developing new treatments for cancer and autoimmune diseases, and is Lead Director of Twist Biosciences (NASDAQ:TWST), a leading company in the synthetic biology field. He previously was a co-founder and Chairman of Biota Technologies, an industrial genomics company; and co-founded and was President of Penederm, a dermatology company that went public and was acquired by Mylan Laboratories. In addition, he was the start-up CEO and later Chairman of OPX Biotechnologies, a renewable chemicals company, which was sold to Cargill. He started his career in the technology field and held management positions at Intel and Metaphor Computer Systems (later acquired by IBM). Rob served on the White House Staff in the first Bush Administration as a White House Fellow and Associate Director of the White House Office of Economic and Domestic Policy.

Since 2004, Rob has served on the faculty of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he teaches courses in the MBA program on the health care industry, and on the opportunity created by increased longevity and aging demographics. He is a trustee of Caltech and Chairman of the Trustee Technology Transfer Committee, and was a visiting professor at Caltech teaching entrepreneurship. Rob was a long-time Board member of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, where he was chairman of the Emerging Companies Section and co-chairman of the Intellectual Property Committee. He was the first Chairman and is a current Board member of Bio Ventures for Global Health. Rob received a BS in engineering with honors from Caltech and an MBA from Harvard.

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