Julianne Parkinson’s expansive career has involved her appointment to some of South Australia’s most influential boards, but its her role as Global Centre for Modern Ageing CEO that’s got the businesswoman ticking.

Based at the Tonsley innovation precinct, the GCMA assists organisations and entrepreneurs to develop, design and deliver products, services and solutions that meet the needs of the world’s older population.

It’s a growing market, with the demographic expected to spend just under US$15 trillion per year by 2030, up from US$8.7 trillion in 2020 according to World Data Lab research.

As such, there’s an opportunity ripe for the picking by Australian entrepreneurs and governments to support ‘age-tech’ solutions and the ‘longevity economy’.

With the Australian population living longer, many are working beyond the typical retirement age of 65 or returning to the workforce post-retirement. Rather than bemoaning this fact, Parkinson believes businesses should embrace older workers who can offer a different perspective and inform companies on how to properly engage with the ageing population.

“We’ve never had so many people over the age of 65, and experiencing much longer periods of life post-traditional retirement,” said Parkinson, a Stanford Business School graduate.

“With that, we also have sweeping, changing trends of the way that people imagined and expected that they will live in these decades of life which are far more demanding.

“We think age-tech is the next big thing, where there’s tech-enabled solutions that support and enable swarms of older people to live better lives through this technology.”

DS: What is ‘age-tech’ and what is the ‘longevity economy’?

JP: Age-tech is a subset of the longevity economy – the economic activity which is around the design and delivery of technology-enabled products and services that support people to live their best lives in residential, retail, at home or at work. For example, is a robotic vacuum cleaner truly as intuitive as it could be? Most products haven’t been designed with older adults at the centre of the frame and that’s particularly true of technology-enabled products. What we’re asking is for age-tech to think about the gaps to create new tech-enabled solutions, but also about the clever adaption of products that exist and go back to the drawing board – working with older adults at the centre of that and seeing people use these products and services to get their thoughts on how to make it more appealing, easier to use and therefore have higher levels of adoption.

DS: What are some examples of age-tech solutions?

JP: The Google series of Home solutions, that seems to be pretty easy to buy off the shelf and install in the home and then those are things that can improve your entertainment value at home. Passive sensing – people don’t want video cameras in their home but people seem to be okay with smart fridges or smart cupboards that show action and interaction. Of course, that’s not just for older adults – we’ve got a growing number of people in Australia who are living on their own, so this is equally relevant for them.

When we solve it for some, we solve it for many.

The sliding door was invented to support people that had mobility issues, but now the sliding door is fabulous for anybody that has a small space. I think something like a robotic vacuum probably isn’t as easy to take out and plug in like a toaster is just yet – so how do we get to that point?

DS: There are many older people who are having to return to the workforce after retiring. Is this a big problem or perhaps indicative that we need to lift the retirement age?

JP: We’ve had the retirement age fixed at 65 for many decades. I think in the 1950s the average worker retired at 65 and died at 67 – but now people are living well into their 80s and some even close to 100. So that trend of longevity is continuing to rise with improvements in health and sanitation and education, so now we have a lot of people who have decades of unplanned life.

Even for those that have the good fortune of being able to go play golf in their spare time, they can find that to be Groundhog Day. Often, after a couple of years into it, they’ve got an urge to want to get back into the workforce in some form or another; they’ve missed the connectivity, the camaraderie, the sense of purpose and contribution.

It’s not easy to get back into the workforce and society hasn’t assembled itself to say ‘Hey this is fantastic come on back into the organisation!’ nor have we kept up in our workplaces with lifelong learning and training. How often are we giving that sort of extended professional development training to people in their 50s and 60s, or are we preferencing younger generations of the workforce? We need to think about the bias that we may have in our workplaces that doesn’t have an expectation.

With the workforce shortages that we have, it just stands to reason that having older adults as an intelligent part of that solution – but curated well – is an immense opportunity.

DS: How big of an issue is ageism in the workplace?

JP: When we think about diversity in the boardroom or in management, we think about gender and sexuality and ethnicity – all of these are very important components of our humanity – but ageing or ageism is the silent one and it’s the only one that affects everybody.

I think people could evaluate their hiring practices, their workforce policy and look at more flexible arrangements – all sorts of people don’t necessarily want to work the same way that they did when they were younger; they might want to work less and they might want flexibility built-in and we can do that now.

This isn’t about a journey just for older adults – this is an intergenerational journey. This isn’t about younger people feeling like their careers have been short-changed or sold in any way because of somebody else – this is about allowing people to have jobs on merit or competency and capability regardless of age.

DS: With the population growing older, is that placing more of a burden on younger people both in terms of carers roles and the taxation role they play given the fact we have to contribute more to services for older people? And how can technology assist to reduce that burden?

JP: Technology can assist – that’s where some of these products or services in the home can substitute what might be that demand for in-person care.

The argument about the tax breaks is further reason why we should be encouraging those who can and want to continue to work because then they become contributors again in a taxpaying society. We know the evidence around how working in a role that you enjoy improves an individual’s wellbeing, so it actually helps to prevent people’s declining wellness. There’s a very healthy economic and social argument for including older adults more fully in our solutions for the future.

The carers point is another really important thing and it’s important to realise that 94 per cent of older adults over the age of 65 live at home. That’s an enormous opportunity to be thinking about new sector opportunities where people will be aging in their own homes, meaning the supply of products and services and the proliferation of that will be immense in the next 10 to 20 or 30 years.

DS: Is enough being done by decision makers and entrepreneurs to turn their mind to these issues?

JP: What we ask of entrepreneurs or governments or large organisations is to equip yourself with the facts and the evidence around changing needs and wants so that you’re informed and have the facts in front of you for business planning and implementation.

DS: What do you see the world looking like for older people in 10-15 years’ time?

JP: It will be a bit like what we’ve seen with the internet; it was nowhere then it was somewhere then it was everywhere.

I think in the next 10, 15, 20 years our aging population will be more visible to people. As we plan our precincts better people will leave their homes and be out shopping. We’ll have conquered that last mile. It’s one thing to get an Uber or a bus; it’s another thing to be able to navigate the art galleries and museums or sporting stadiums in ways that are as easy as they were for you when you were younger.

As we design the spaces that are inclusive and universal in design, we open access to people and this includes our accommodation. The property and construction market have a lot to benefit from this; how can we make sure that our houses or apartments are built for purpose or retrofitted to allow us to stay in one place for longer?