Blended Futures of Aging & Business Innovation
Communications and comfort huge (Nasdaq: RIMM) RIM, the maker of the ubiquitous Blackberry, sees a variety of defining traits ahead. These replicate the themes of my very own exploration and are cornerstones of the MIT AgeLab
Motley Fool’s Dan Dzombak January 26 posting, “4 Essential Tendencies RIM’s Futurist Foresees,” reviews on a discuss given by RIM’s Supervisor of Innovation & Know-how Futurist, Joseph Dvorak, PhD. Dr Dvorak identifies 4 traits impacting the foreseeable future of the intelligent mobile phone:
(1) Ageing planet: the median age on the planet in 2000 was 26, by mid-century it will be 36 and the quantity of people today in excess of 60 will triple — to approximately two billion folks
(2) Connectivity: intelligent telephones, other units and wireless vendors will blur action, position, and push trends we previously see in social media and interaction
(3) Empowered customers: Buyers will continue on to adopt equipment that enable them watch and regulate their partnership with companies, e.g., social media that advises on every thing from restaurant decisions, to economic providers, to ‘hey, where’s my offer?’
(4)’Values’ obtaining (e.g., eco-friendly shoppers). Values paying for is not just for kids. In which there is a increase in ‘color causes’ (my phrase) — purchasing inexperienced, supporting pink, and encouraging pink — getting old child boomers are progressively interested in their social effects and legacy. That is, ‘what am I contributing and what will I leave powering?’
Insight & Innovations
On your own these traits are exciting and company as very well as authorities have to be conscious of their probable affect on the upcoming. Nevertheless, the long run of getting old and innovation is a mixing of these trends – not the extension of any a single.
What transpires when more mature individuals are ubiquitously related, empowered and make invest in choices on values past value and good quality? For illustration, what could possibly wireless-enabled wellbeing or caregiving providers in the pocket of an growing older boomer seem like? Will ubiquitous computing electric power, social media, and value getting generate virtual collaborative networks of services vendors for sandwiched boomers right now and frail boomers tomorrow? Can you think about the emergence of a 24/7 on-demand from customers, always ‘visible’ on your wise cellular phone, eco-friendly, transportation service for a social network of ‘friends?’
The business enterprise prospect is not to be only aware of these developments, but to blend them, imagine competing realities and to see these option futures as drivers of product or service and services innovation.