Thursday this week is the Awards Day for the second Design Challenge at the Stanford Center on Longevity, an event where technology, design and yes the business of aging connect to celebrate innovation in the development of products for improving the experience of an extended lifetime. As a reminder from my March 10th blog post, this year’s theme is Enabling Personal Mobility Across the Life Span.
In order to develop capacity, all great initiatives these days need great collaborations. With Stanford’s Design Challenge, the collaborator is Aging 2.0, a global organization that drives an agenda encouraging innovation in the area of aging and long-term care.
We are only beginning to see the emergence of new age-friendly products that are coming out of technology driven design and application. The next fast five years will likely take us to new heights. Whoever wins the Stanford award April 9th will have earned it, yet all the participants should be acknowledged for how they contributed to what I prefer to call the “longevity market”.
Can the opportunity for invention and production be widely supported if there is a sustainable market for these products? Well judging by the activities of Aging 2.0 there must be. The Toronto Chapter of this network had a “pitch event” at the end of February featuring eight or so start-ups. It’s all very exciting and the rate of adoption to aging related product marketing will pick up speed.
So, I wonder what might an Aging 3.0 model might look like?