2026 EFMD Longevity Leadership for Business Schools

DAY 1 – WAKE UP!

Understand the demographic transformation reshaping countries, companies, consumers, and careers. Explore how longevity is redefining the purpose and positioning of higher education.

The Impacts: What Ageing Societies Mean for Countries, Companies, Consumers & Careers

The opening half-day reframes longevity as a strategic disruptor rather than a social or HR issue. Participants will examine the demographic forces reshaping economies, labour markets, consumer power, and leadership pipelines — and why most organisations and business schools are still operating on outdated assumptions about age, talent, and retirement. Using global data, case examples, and a live “assumption audit,” the session reveals how ageing populations are transforming everything from national productivity to workforce design, customer strategy, and the future of learning.

The module closes by identifying the specific blind spots and opportunities facing management education as the world moves from 3-generation to 5-generation societies.

This session sets the baseline mindset shift: ageing isn’t a problem to manage — it’s a future to lead.

4-Quarter Lives: A New Roadmap for 60-Year Careers

The afternoon turns from institutions to individuals, introducing a new life-course model for a world in which careers now stretch across six decades. Through Avivah’s “4-Quarter Lives” framework (Q1 Learning, Q2 Building, Q3 Becoming, Q4 Harvesting), participants explore how identity, purpose, skills and transitions evolve across longer lives — and why midlife (50-75) is becoming the most dynamic phase of reinvention. The session highlights the rising demand for structured midlife transition programmes, the decline of linear career ladders, and the emergence of a new learner segment: experienced professionals seeking renewal, not retirement. Through reflection and peer discussion, participants map their own life-quarter and begin identifying where their institution could play a role in enabling Third-Quarter talent to re-skill, re-pivot and re-enter. This module issues a challenge: if business schools are not designing for midlife learning, someone else will.

Facilitated by Avivah Wittenberg-Cox – Forbes columnist, Founder 20-first, Visiting Faculty Oxford Saïd, Co-director, Ambassador, Stanford Center on Longevity

DAY 2 – EXPLORE

Discover how the longevity economy is driving innovation across industries and what this means for universities. Learn from first movers and challengers creating new business models and midlife transition programmes for learners across 100-year lives.

The Longevity Opportunity – The Silver Economy in multiple industries as a source of inspiration

Longevity represents one of the most overlooked growth opportunities of the coming decade. Older consumers are already the fastest-growing, wealthiest, and most dynamic customer segment in advanced economies. The Silver Economy is therefore not a niche — it is a multi-trillion-dollar engine that cuts across industries. In healthcare, this fuels personalised prevention, ageing-in-place services and digital therapeutics. In insurance, longevity risk demands new hybrid products and new risk logic. In financial services, multi-stage life horizons reshape wealth planning and retirement solutions. In fashion and luxury, age-fluid style and inclusive design are becoming mainstream demand drivers. The consumer of the future is older, healthier for longer, and increasingly digitally native — but values shift with age: time sovereignty, purpose and identity matter more after 50. Markets will become naturally intergenerational rather than age-segmented. As a result, longevity is not simply a demographic fact — it is a strategic design space for the next decade of growth.

Higher Education’s First Movers: Designing for a 100-Year Life

Higher education is at a demographic crossroads. As the traditional 18–22 student pipeline declines and 100-year lives redefine when and why people learn, forward-looking institutions are reimagining who they serve and how. Longevity and intergenerational connection are fast becoming powerful drivers of revenue, relevance, and renewal. This session highlights global exemplars—from Stanford and Arizona State to Universidade Católica Portuguesa – showing how first movers are expanding to engage midlife learners and lifelong alumni, embedding intergenerational learning to foster innovation and belonging, and designing new models that connect living, learning, and community impact. Participants will leave with practical ways to make longevity a strategic advantage for institutional growth and mission alignment.

The Rise of Midlife Transition Programmes

Higher Education’s Next Frontier – Across leading universities, Midlife Transition Programmes are emerging as a new category of lifelong learning for experienced adults seeking purpose, renewal, and impact in the “third quarter” of life. This session makes the strategic case for midlife learning as a growth frontier and shows how first movers are turning it into an institutional advantage. Drawing on insights from The Nexel Collaborative (a global alliance of 25+ universities) and exemplars such as Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative, Stanford Distinguished Careers Institute, and UChicago’s Leadership & Society Initiative, we’ll unpack how these programmes drive personal transformation, intergenerational learning, alumni re-engagement, and campus renewal. Participants leave with a clear view of the opportunity, programme design principles, and a practical framework for exploring and launching a midlife transition programme.

DAY 3 – INNOVATE

Future-proofing Business Schools

Over the past two decades, universities, business schools, and new entrants have developed midlife transition programmes — from the Modern Elder Academy in the United States and Mexico, and Co-Generate in Canada to Octave in France. Yet, most remain focused on the personal transition experience and do not connect midlife transitions to the broader macro-trend of longevity. The Longevity Leadership Executive Programme at Católica Lisbon School of Business & Economics — now in its third edition — brings this missing systemic lens. We will share learnings on participant profiles, our engagement with the local longevity ecosystem, and how we are designing the next phase of intergenerational work.

This session is an invitation to reimagine the role of business schools. How can institutions redesign executive education, alumni engagement, and leadership pipelines to remain relevant in an age-diverse world of lifelong learners?