What goes around comes around and gets a new market sizing. You may have seen a rather giddy press release recently that sized the market for aging in place technology at a cool $30 billion by 2017. The global market for elder care technologies will hit $7.2 billion by 2018 and as for home monitoring of seniors, the number of units of wearable wireless devices will climb from 3 million units (2011) to 36 million units by 2017, and users of family locator services (including PERS) will reach 70 million by 2016. It’s a good thing these sizings forecast three to four years from now. That will give everyone time to overcome barriers that hamstring utilization today -- like controlling the cost of device, figuring out who pays for them and will the target user actually be able to afford to use it/wear it to help them stay safe or will the doctor and supporting staff remain engaged to help the user keep their chronic disease(s) under control?
Finding the visibility and network that your offering deserves. We are entering the trade show season, so it’s time to make a few go/no go decisions. You have had your product (or new version) or service ready for the past months or year. Your pilots have been successful and you now know that professionals, prospects and early customers are pleased with what you’ve done. You’ve read Ten Tips for Launching a Product or Service. You have first focused on the local/regional events. Now make sure your offering – whether it is caregiving, health and wellness, home safety, learning, engagement or just plain fun – is well-received at events attended by prospective customers, resellers, referring professionals, possible partners, and adjacent product categories. Consider this list of national events (listed in date order). Study prior exhibitor participant lists, learn about typical number and profile of attendees, booth costs, hotel and attendance fees. Note any (of many) innovation award opportunities, if not now, then for the future. If you are not that familiar with any of these, consider going once as an attendee -- before exhibiting. Comments about other events are, of course, welcome:
Incubators and contests -- do they enable innovation? Paul Krugman's interesting article about GE’s competition to find a new design raises a question about how to boost innovation and lower its cost. If you read the article, entitled 'Complexity is Free' – you will discover how a simple contest, fielded internationally, generated a design improvement at almost no cost for GE: "The winning prize pool [was] $20,000, spread out across 8 finalists, with awards ranging from $1,000 to $7,000 each." So for $20K, GE got something it wanted, layered that something into a design process that enables continuous revision to designs without new infrastructure investment (the 'free' in the title.) Does anyone else find it interesting that there was no internal engineer who could figure out how to design a lighter-weight bracket component -- and that a contest was required? Or was this a publicity stunt to generate good will for GE?
A new study* on aging trends, commissioned by the New England Home Healthcare Consortium (NEHHC) www.nehhc.org reveals that more than half of the respondents' greatest fear is outliving their wealth, followed by becoming too weak to care for themselves.
Life marches on – at the older end, baby boomers are on Medicare. A few years ago when I began writing this blog, a senior was a senior – 65+, albeit with the potential for a very long life. As boomers stomp into Medicare eligibility at 10,000 per day, they too have something in common with seniors. But we don’t describe them as seniors. (How funny will that be in 10 years when they are 77?) Anyway, in a world in which women outlive men, in which there is so much buying power in the so-called world of baby boomers, shouldn’t marketers get really excited about marketing to boomers? I mean they represent 80 million people. And according to the Forbes article about the Longevity Economy, the disposable income for Americans aged 50+ was more than $3 trillion. Hint, 50+ is the AARP designation for its membership and spans age 50 through the oldest old. Luckily, the youngest boomer aged 49 turns 50 next year – synchronizing boomers and AARP.
Beacon Hill Village created a concept out of need... Last week a PBS broadcast was dedicated to the topic of aging in place within the pioneer community of the ‘Village’ movement – Beacon Hill Village, launched 12 years ago by Judy Willett to help seniors stay in their homes longer.
