Business Week Special Report on Aging in Place
What does it mean for seniors?
This is truly special. Business Week has devoted a special report to aging in place. We've seen newspaper and magazine articles, usually on the social curiosity or human interest aspect of using technology to help seniors. This report is different—it reflects and reinforces the key principles of creating viable markets and discusses the many, many small vendors and organizations that are investing, slowly growing the businesses that will serve us as we age. As I often say (when anyone is around to listen): a market undescribed doesn't exist. So what does it mean?
Business press like this may jog big companies into considering doing more. Demographics (which have an inexorable forward movement these days), payment models, and documented success examples also encourage investment.
Big companies validate markets for small companies. We’re talking about Intel, Philips, GE, Nintendo—all good for small players considering any of their categories. With big company marketing, small companies can ride on their coattails. "You know that Big Behemoth CO product? Ours does x, y, and z that it doesn't do."
Awareness is the largest barrier to adoption in this market. As proven in every setting where I speak, as well as by large surveys like AARP's Healthy@Home, people are largely unaware of the variety of technologies existing today that could help boomers (half with one living parent) and their aging parents.
Technology maturity is the second biggest barrier. A number of products today were merely gleams in the eye five years ago. That means they haven't been in the market long enough to undergo the revisions that can make them cheap, interoperable, and integrated in examples we can all see. When they've evolved more . . . well, think of the speedy evolution of “bag phones to today's tiny cell phones,” as I heard this week from Jim Reilly, director at NewCourtland HT. Maturity follows the lead of investment by big players.
So if you have a role to play in moving this industry forward, that special report was truly special.
By Laurie Orlov
Aging in Place Technology Watch Blog
[Originally posted September 23, 2009, at Laurie's Aging in Place Technology Watch Web site.]
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