“It’s the right time”: introducing the SARI Institute

As medical advances continue, and more and more of us are are living and working for much longer, the question is what those extra decades will look like. In Japan, there are now more than 100,000 people over the age of 100, many of them healthy and active.

Public health experts around the world are starting to shift the goal from lifespan to “health span”. This is important, because nobody wants to live forever in decrepit misery. We want longer working lives that are fun as well as productive.

Some research has suggested that staying in the workforce may stave off chronic disease, help preserve memory and verbal skills. One US study found that retiring early could actually be bad for your health. Work can provide structure, social interaction, purpose – at best.

It’s only fairly recently that anyone has started looking in earnest at what we as individuals can do to shape our own longer working lives, and how organisations can best support people who are reinventing themselves into their sixties and seventies. Staying in the same career over a longer life is no longer appealing – nor is it feasible.

Two pioneers in this area are London Business School professors Herminia Ibarra and Lynda Gratton.

Herminia has spent decades deeply exploring career transitions: her book Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career urged people to experiment with their multiplicity rather than trying to find a single true self, while Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader turned conventional wisdom about leadership on its head. Self-reflection can only take you so far, she said; doing leadership work is what actually enables you to grow into your potential: “Too much introspection anchors us in the past.”

What if you are already in midlife or older – too young to retire but too experienced to start all over again? Herminia’s forthcoming book The Bonus Years: Reinventing our Longer Work Lives is a refreshingly positive take on how to flourish in the latter part of your career. She argues that in a world of longer lives, multiple careers and accelerating disruption, the most valuable skill a person can gain isn’t a new area of expertise, it’s the ability to move through change with agency and adaptability.

Lynda’s book 2016 The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity investigated how demographics were changing the world of work. Ten years on, she has just published Living the 100-Year Life, which explores the next question: how exactly do you create a lasting career and a life you love? Intentionality is the key here.

“It is a call to pause, think deeply and make choices now that will shape your working life: what you build, what you value, and who you become. For too long, careers have been imagined as a ladder to climb. Living the 100-Year Life invites us instead to weave a working life – one that brings together mastery, learning, relationships, and renewal, and that can evolve as our lives become longer and more varied.”

Now, Herminia and Lynda are combining their expertise as Academic Co-Directors of London Business School’s new SARI Foundation Institute for Work, Careers and Longevity. Made possible by a £25 million gift to the School, the institute is wholly dedicated to the organisational and career impact of longer working lives.

“In many ways, the institute brings together the questions Lynda and I have each been pursuing from different angles throughout our careers,” says Herminia. “Now we have the opportunity to build something together.”

“The timing is perfect,” says Lynda. “This is a problem that really matters to people – and to society.” The Institute will bring together academics from a variety of disciplines who are researching the working world as we experience it today and tomorrow. Above all, it will be practical, generating new insights, guidance and tools grounded in evidence.

“For me, this is unique opportunity to build on a lifetime of work devoted to understanding how people navigate careers, leadership, identity, and transitions,” says Herminia. “As increasing longevity, changing organizations, and new technologies transform our working lives, these questions feel more urgent than ever.”

Living the 100-Year Life: How to Build a Career that Lasts and a Life You’ll Love by Lynda Gratton is out now.

The Bonus Years: Reinventing our Longer Working Lives by Herminia Ibarra will be published in January 2027; pre-order here.