It was a happening place that included great conversations between entrepreneurs and senior living industry executives, academics, and others.

Aging 2.0 produced the Global Innovations Summit last week in San Francisco. It was a happening place that included great conversations between entrepreneurs and senior living industry executives, academics, and others.

In true San Francisco fashion, there were panels and presentations by disruptive innovators as Tom Lee of One Medical and Chip Conley, Head of Global Hospitality and Strategy at Airbnb.

There were a number of compelling pitches from Aging 2.0 incubator companies including Sing Fit, Breezie, CareMerge, Everplans, Narrative Apparel and WoundRounds.

The Most Important Panel

I found the final panel of the day to be the most important and compelling.  The panelists included:

  • Robert Kramer, CEO of NIC
  • Dan Hirschfield, President, Genesis Rehab Services
  • Ed Kenny, Chairman and CEO, LCS
  • Health Odom, VP of Business Development, PointClickCare
  • Chris Simon, VP of Senior Housing Performance, Health Care ERI
  • Scott Dingfield, Chief Innovation Officer of Home Instead
  • Will Clark, Senior Vice President, Brookdale Senior Living
  • Sam Barnett, Lead Investment Strategist, Medline. entrepreneur

 Their focus was on what entrepreneurs need to know and do to be successful in the senior living marketplace. Here are the highlights:

  • Entrepreneurs need to spend serious time thinking about and honing their business model. They need to know how they are going to make money and why people would want to pay for what they are selling.
  • They also need to have a solid understanding of regulatory requirements and what consumers will actually be willing to pay for.
  • Specifically when tackling the skilled nursing marketplace innovators must address the question of who is going to pay for the product or service.
  • One of the panelists suggested that because China has more than 300 million people over aged 65 it could be a great place to pilot new ideas.
  • Innovators need to make innovation easy for their pilot partners. This means understanding the senior living marketplace, having an implementation plan and thinking about how to scale their idea.
  • When pitching your idea to a senior living executive you need to understand what their needs are and how you can provide a meaningful . . . not trivial solution to those problems. That means it needs to work, it needs to be cost effective and it cannot increase the workload of staff.
  • If you get the opportunity to pitch an idea to a senior living company and they say No. Learn from their feedback and move on. Don’t become a pest.
  • Network with people like those at Aging 2.0, AARP, IDEO and Mary Furlong to refine your ideas.

Finally if technology is an important part of your roadmap you might want to attend the Silicon Valley Boomer Venture Summit that takes place on June 30th in Santa Clara, California. This conference is in it. This is the place where venture and angel investors gather with entrepreneurs to explore how to improve the lives of seniors through technology.

You can find all the details HERE and, by using the discount code SV15-SHF, you will save 20%.

Hope to see you there.

Mary