Four For Friday | May 17, 2024

LF123 | Care as a political hot potato?, rising metabolic burden, corporate venturing, the economic impact of nature and a new newsletter

Welcome to Looking Forward’s Four For Friday. Four things that have piqued my interest this week. Enjoy!

Could ‘Care’ be a winning narrative for the US election

Could care become a touchstone issue for 2024?

The idea that a winning narrative for the coming US election could be about something as compassionate, sensible, and innovative as “care” sounds far fetched in this febrile and toxic political climate but one can hope. And if there’s someone who could be a cut-through messenger, it’s Ai-jen Poo.

Big rise in aging disease burden

The disease burden in the past few decades has conclusively shifted from communicable diseases to diseases of old age (or metabolic diseases) in particular cancer, musculoskeletal, cardio and neurological. Since 2000 the incidence of these diseases has risen 50%.

The study found that between 2022-2050 life expectancy will go up by around 5 years (itself a smaller amount than in recent decades), but healthy life expectancy by only half that. So our societies will need to cope with another 2.5 years of unhealthy lives on average.

This ties up with another FT article about the profound social changes that ageing societies will bring, which emphasizes the need for pension reform and for people to work longer.

BMW’s ‘Corporate Venture Client’ model

At interesting video by the corporate venturing expert who has developed a lightweight model for getting corporates to engage with start-ups. ‘Traditional’ corporate venture generally works via equity investments for minority stakes, but the ‘27Pilots’ approach focuses on optimizing pilots - making the corporate a customer, not investor, of startups.

Like venturing, this requires dedicated resources to ensure pilots are well structured, valuable for both sides, and they deliver learnings. But it allows for corporates to potentially engage with tens or even hundreds of start-ups a year.

Nature loss could slow UK growth by 12%

The UK’s Green Finance Institute has released a report that links nature loss with a major GDP hit, in the order of 12% - larger than Covid. The UK is already “one of the world's most nature-depleted countries” and as such is at high risk from “zoonotic diseases, antimicrobial resistance, soil health decline and the global repercussions of food security”.

Bonus: Healthy Longevity-focused sub

A free fifth story, as this one is a shameless plug for the new healthy ageing and longevity newsletter from SOMPO Digital Lab: Healthspans. It’s co-authored by yours truly together with Japanese health-tech and policy expert Makiko Kawabe, so will have a global flavor, with one eye on Japan.

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That’s all for this week. As always, feedback welcome. Feel free to share insights or links of interest.

- Stephen