Over the past 35+ years, Dr. Ken Dychtwald has emerged as North America's foremost visionary and original thinker regarding the lifestyle, marketing, healthcare and workforce implications of the age wave. He is a psychologist, gerontologist, documentary filmmaker, entrepreneur and best-selling author of sixteen books on aging-related issues, including Bodymind, Age Wave: The Challenges and Opportunities of an Aging Society, Age Power: How the 21st Century Will be Ruled by the New Old, The Power Years: A User's Guide to the Rest of Your Life, Workforce Crisis: How to Beat the Coming Shortage of Skills and Talent and a children's book, Gideon's Dream: A Tale of New Beginnings. His most recent book is A New Purpose: Redefining Money, Family, Work, Retirement and Success. In 2007, he had his debut as a documentary filmmaker and host with the highly rated/acclaimed PBS special The Boomer Century: 1946-2046.

Ken Dychtwald has served as a fellow of the World Economic Forum and is the recipient of the distinguished American Society on Aging Award for outstanding national leadership in the field of aging. American Demographics Magazine honored him as the single most influential marketer to boomers over the past quarter century. His article in The Harvard Business Review, "It's Time to Retire Retirement," was awarded the prestigious McKinsey Award, tying for first place with the legendary Peter Drucker.

In 1986, Ken became the founding President and CEO of Age Wave, a firm created to guide Fortune 500 companies and government groups in product/service development for boomers and mature adults. His explorations and innovative solutions have fertilized and catalyzed a broad spectrum of industry sectors- from vitamins and cookies to automotive design and retail merchandising to mutual funds and health insurance.

Dr. Dychtwald has addressed more than two million people worldwide in speeches to corporate, association, social service and government groups. His strikingly accurate predictions and innovative ideas are regularly featured in leading print and electronic media worldwide, including: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Financial Times, Fortune, Time, Newsweek, Business Week, U.S. News and World Report, The Economist, HK Daily News, South China Morning Post, The Standard, 60 Minutes, Good Morning America, ABC World News Tonight, Today Show, PBS, NPRM and BBC.

Through highly acclaimed presentations, breakthrough research and consulting initiatives, and his leadership within both the social science and business communities, Ken Dychtwald has dedicated his life to battling ageist stereotypes while promoting a new, vital and meaningful role for life's second half.

Retirement at the Tipping Point: New Funding, New Timing New Purpose

Based on highly acclaimed Age Wave research, this NEW presentation reveals how four generations of Americans are altering the funding, timing and purpose of retirement. This mind-stretching program will explore the following: Who suffered the most loss during the recent economic crisis and how long do they think it will take to recover? Why the retirement clock is being reset to at least age 67 and how that could be good for everyone. What are the key lessons learned from the financial crisis and how have people's behavior and attitudes toward money and retirement changed? What is the #1 retirement "wildcard?" How the sandwich generation has morphed into multigenerational "Rubik" families and the vast implications of this for all generations. A vision of retirees' changing role in American life - from lifelong learning and legacy to mentoring and philanthropreneuring. How financial professionals can take advantage of this unprecedented opportunity to help guide their clients in funding their new retirement hopes, dreams and purpose.

Living with Purpose: Rethinking Success

Success is defined differently at different moments in life. As a child, it has a lot to do with pleasing our parents. In our teens, it's often about academic achievement and popularity. As a working adult, success is often about balancing the challenge of creating a healthy family while building a satisfying career. But what's next? Healthy living and modern medicine have given our lives longevity, but how do we make the most of all that time? Is it too late to go back to school, start a new and gratifying career (or turbo-charge your current one), fall in love again, reinvent yourself? Since happiness is about more than what's in the bank, what are the essential components of an all-weather, successful "life portfolio" - with a significant investment in head, heart, spirit and civic engagement? This hopeful and motivating new presentation answers the essential questions: what is success now and what is the new purpose of life's second half?

Four Generations Rethink Work, Retirement and Success

We are living in the midst of unprecedented demographic, economic and social changes that impact nearly every aspect of our personal and professional lives. Increasing longevity and insufficient savings mean that older workers will be working longer and shrinking their retirement. Mid-career workers are trying to reboot their enthusiasm for a longer and more demanding worklife as they simultaneously try to fund their future retirement. Young workers are struggling to enter the workforce during tough economic times. What makes each of the four working generations tick - and perform at their best? What are they looking to get from - and give to - their jobs? How will they measure success in this new era? This presentation will explore these issues while showing how to retain and attract valuable talent and enhance productivity through programs such as: creative use of flexible work arrangements, innovative learning and mentoring opportunities, sabbaticals, retraining, re-careering, flex-retirement and creative compensation and benefits programs.

Retirement Wake-Up Call: The Future of Financial Services

How has today's financial crisis altered the relationship between client and financial advisor? Based on research findings from numerous highly acclaimed Age Wave studies on retirement and financial services, this presentation sheds light on which aspects of the financial services industry are dying and which are coming alive. It outlines the "new" retirement-related needs, worries, and aspirations - and how financial services firms and advisors can re-establish trust with the wary public. Meet the "Ageless Explorers," the "Comfortably Contents," the "Live for Todays" and the "Sick and Tireds." Learn how each group feels about their lives, their prospects for fulfilling their hopes and dreams for retirement and what role financial planning, employer support and/or government policies have played in getting them to where they are today. This presentation also covers how the emerging adult lifestage demands of careers, parenthood, eldercare, grandparenthood, singlehood, disability and rehirement will affect savings and retirement funding.

INFLUENCE: How Women's Soaring Economic Power Will Transform Our World for the Better

Now, more than ever, the role of women in defining and driving business is paramount. Women already control more than 50% of all consumer spending. They are being educated in higher numbers than men and are now, for the first time in history, employed in higher numbers than men. While many of today's women stand strong when wielding earning power, many still slump in their financial confidence, long-term financial decision-making skills, economic control and investment power. The final frontier for women in the gender revolution will be gaining muscle and control over their money. Based on groundbreaking findings from Age Wave's landmark research study "Women, Money, and Power," this presentation reveals important new insights on women and their relationship to money. It provides an illuminating and in-depth look at women's motivations, fears, and challenges around money, saving, and spending and shows how to most effectively target their needs and hopes.

How the Age Wave Will Transform the Marketplace - and Our Lives

This visionary presentation offers deep insights into the global population shifts that are occurring and what they mean for business and marketers. How might increasing longevity and declining fertility impact societies, economies, families and individual lives? Do people want to live traditional "linear" or more flexible "cyclic" lives and how does that alter brand loyalty? How will the "age wave" impact the consumer marketplace and which sectors and products will shrink and which will grow: from vitamins and nutraceuticals, cookies to lifetime income insurance and anti-aging healthcare, and from adventure travel to edutainment. Which industries - and countries - are hopeful about their "age wave" prospects and which are fearful? This presentation outlines how companies should orient their branding and marketing to best resonate with the new generation of "middlescent" adults. Dr. Ken Dychtwald will also provide a list of "key marketing lessons" from 35 years on the front lines - that can be applied by marketers across industries.

The Longevity Revolution: The Future of Health and Healthcare

This sweeping presentation provides a visionary glimpse into the future of the body, health and healthcare. How long might we live? Will our later years be a time of health and vitality or illness and disability? Are we heading toward "Shangri-la" or "Gerassic Park?" How far will we go in our pursuit of the "fountain of health?" What are the new frontiers of medicine - from genomics, anti-aging therapies, therapeutic cloning and virtual surgery to pharmaceuticals, cosmeceuticals and nutraceuticals. How might they be used to combat the diseases of aging? What role will consumer empowerment and self-care play in the new healthcare marketplace? This presentation previews how rising longevity, the aging of the population, and increasingly self-empowered consumers are converging to transform nearly every aspect of our healthcare system-from professional training and geriatric competency to IT, from facility design to service delivery, from high tech to self-care.

The New Experiential Marketplace

At this moment in history - with so many fears and worries - there is a deepening appreciation for the immeasurable value of great times with friends and loved ones, the satisfaction of continued personal growth and lifelong learning and the excitement of encountering new people, places and cultures. In addition, fueled by the dual liberations of empty nesting and retirement, tens of millions of men and women are beginning to enjoy more free time than at any other point in their lives. These forces are causing a massive shift in interest from a desire to purchase "things" to an unquenchable appetite for new, exciting, stimulating and challenging "experiences." Learn how this change will transform the consumer marketplace and give birth to a new assortment of travel, leisure, recreation, rejuvenation, entertainment, infotainment, housing, volunteering and lifelong learning industries.

The Prophet of the Coming Aging Boom

Forbes Magazine, November 07, 2011

Where others see dire problems, Ken Dychtwald sees untapped opportunities.

For three decades Ken Dychtwald has been proclaiming that a demographic tidal wave is approaching America. He calls it the Age Wave, which is also the name of his Emeryville, Calif. consultancy and a book he co-wrote back in 1989. Learn to ride it, he tells businesses, or you will be crushed and drowned. Now that the wave is beginning to hit full force, more and more businesses are listening.

Dychtwald's message: Baby boomers, the 78 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964, present a vast market for a potential explosion of products and services, from new dating websites to longevity insurance to new kinds of food. "Eighty percent of the growth in the American population is taking place in people over 50," he says.

It's not news that the population is aging, but it's generally seen as a grim problem and a costly burden. Dychtwald, himself a boomer at 61, views it as a huge opportunity. The later years are becoming a time for reinvention, experimentation and consumption. In a poll he did for financial services firm SunAmerica this year, 54% of people over 55 said they viewed retirement as a new chapter rather than a time to wind down. And they are staying healthier longer. Some commentators, like futurist Sonia Arrison, say humans will soon commonly last a century or more.

How will they live, what will they buy, and how should businesses serve them? Dychtwald, who swims, practices yoga and eschews caffeine and red meat but has nevertheless battled high cholesterol, high blood pressure and arthritis, has some surprising ideas. One he calls "personal rocket fuel." Consumers will have a device inside their toilets that will test their waste for "biomarkers" to trigger customized delivery of a stash of 15 or so vitamins and nutrients in powder form. Other ideas: "vision quest" car windows, programmed to darken or brighten in glare or low light according to the needs of the individual driver; "smart pants" workout trousers with sensors that react to physical changes to chart exercise protocols, preventing falls and saving billions in medical costs; "Internet cemeteries" replacing grave sites and photo albums with a robust online archive business.

Two more: "third-age experience agents," all-in-one travel agents, career counselors, matchmakers and life coaches to serve boomers who have vast swaths of time on their hands, and a new generation of noninvasive laser technology to rejuvenate splotchy, wrinkled skin. "The size of that business is almost unimaginable," he says.

It might be easy to dismiss notions of Internet cemeteries and smart pants, except that Dychtwald has a long track record of successfully recommending product innovations. He refuses to disclose current consulting specifics because of confidentiality agreements, but two decades ago, he says, he advised Centrum to produce a vitamin for older people, Centrum Silver. He also persuaded the McNeil Consumer Healthcare division of Johnson & Johnson to produce Tylenol Arthritis Pain, with a container designed for arthritic hands to open. For AnheuserBusch he recommended Michelob Ultra, with fewer calories. "You probably didn't know its target demographic was 40 to 50-plus," he says.

He stumbled into gerontology by a very baby boomer route. The son of a clothing retailer in Newark, N.J., he took a psychology course at Lehigh University that motivated him to decamp for the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, Calif., where for three years he practiced yoga, meditated, studied massage and tried encounter groups. Then at 23 he joined a Berkeley, Calif. nonprofit called Sage (Senior Actualization & Growth Exploration) that tapped some of the techniques he had been using on himself to improve the well-being of the elderly. Not long after, he got a psychology Ph.D.

Following a decade during which he made lots of presentations to groups for the aging and health care companies, he saw a future in spreading his positive aging message to corporate clients. By the late 1990s he had started five vetures, including a media company that produced a free newspaper for seniors and an outfit that put out frozen meals for people with medical problems. He says his timing was bad: "When we went out to get more funding, people said, 'If it doesn't have dot-com at the end of it, it's not what we're looking for.'" By 2000 the companies had all run aground, and Dychtwald had lost most of the $25 million he had amassed.

"I learned that I may be more of a thought leader than a business manager," he says. For the last decade he has focused on speaking, consulting and churning out books that spread his message of senior buying power and rebirth. He employs eight people and charges $50,000 to $100,000 per speech. In the two weeks after Labor Day he took eight flights; met with executives at PepsiCo, General Mills and three financial services firms; and delivered keynote addresses to two audiences of 750-plus, including a health insurance trade group.

While his big message is about opportunity and reinvention post-50, he says he's also acutely aware of aging's dark side and is increasingly interested in addressing its challenges. He ticks off big problems: a dearth of doctors who specialize in geriatrics, meager funding for prevention of diseases like Alzheimer's, and fragmented long-term care services. He says, "I'm troubled by the absence of leadership, by the fact that we're so shortsighted."

But he quickly adds that there is a huge upside waiting for any business that makes headway in meeting the needs of the elderly. To illustrate he tells a personal story. His 91-year-old father, Seymour, suffers from macular degeneration. Every month he gets two $3,000 injections to slow the process. If there were a procedure to restore his father's sight, Dychtwald says, Seymour would pay "everything he has." But instead of bemoaning the situation, Dychtwald sees big potential for invention, healing and dramatic profits. "I see breakthroughs that not only could change the world and improve people's lives," he says, "but they can also create enormous shareholder value and make serious money."

Read Ken's article in the Huffington Post, Enough with the Doom and Gloom.

If you'd like to take a moment to watch Larry King talking with Ken Dychtwald about his new book, With Purpose: Going from Success to Significance in Work and Life, see the link below. It's a terrific interview and covers many of the points from the new "With Purpose" presentation.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2009/04/29/lkl.ken.extra.cnn?iref=videosearch