GUEST POST from Arlen Meyers

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GUEST POST from Arlen Meyers

Despite rumors to the contrary, private medical practice is not dead. Yes, the numbers of employed physicians are growing, but, according to a recent AMA survey, 60% of physicians work in physician-owned practices. In addition, the report revealed that eighteen percent of physicians were in solo practice, down 6 percentage points over 5 years.

Some define a solopreneur as a business owner who works and runs their business alone. Going by this definition of solopreneur, about a third of the American workforce comprising freelancers and consultants fit under category. Here are 20 of the top self-employed business opportunities right now.

However, if you define physician solopreneurs as those who create patient-customer defined value through the deployment of clinical innovation working , primarily, on their own, then the universe of solopreneurs gets much bigger.

Solopreneurs have an inherently entrepreneurial mindset, and they prefer single-handedly managing their business. The entrepreneurial mindset, in some ways, is similar to the clinical mindset but , many ways, is different. That’s important because innovation starts with your mindset.

There are many different kinds of physician solopreneurs. Some, like solo private practitioners, run small to medium sized professional services businesses. Some are technopreneurs, trying to get a product to patients. Others are social entrepreneurs, striving to improve the human condition, or intrapreneurs, acting like entrepreneurs in their organizations. Others are freelancers,consultants, independents, or contractors, offering services in many different realms including financial services, marketing, revenue cycle management, executive recruiting and coaching and many more. Solopreneurship, however, is a contradiction in terms, since entrepreneurship is a team sport and requires many people and moving parts to succeed.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that by 2020, about 65 million Americans will be freelancers, temps, independent contractors and solopreneurs, making up about 40% of the workforce. The result has been an explosion of co-working spaces to meet the demand for flexible, imaginative offices that catalyze creative thinking, collaboration and innovation. Some are not sold on the idea, and , in fact think it inhibits productivity and is a fad.

There is another way to view solopreneurs-those who are trying to address the loneliness public health crisis. Baby boomers are aging alone more than any generation in U.S. history, and the resulting loneliness is a looming public-health threat. About one in 11 Americans age 50 and older lacks a spouse, partner or living child, and that portion is projected to grow. It adds up to about eight million people in the U.S. without close kin, the main source of companionship in old age.

Solopreneurship comes with some hazards:

1. Thinking that solopreneurship is about just creating a business
2. Social and emotional isolation
3. Lack of robust internal and external networks
4. Faulty social support mechanisms
5. Lack of divergent thinking informed by interdisciplinary and edge technology thinking
6. Failure to see around corners
7. Not creating a product that anyone wants to buy
8. Not having a VAST business model
9. Playing in the wrong part of the novelty-value innovation matrix
10. Not finding the right mentors, coaches and sponsors

The rise of portfolio careers, encore careers, independents and structural changes in the part-time economy is changing the face of work. Doctors are undergoing this kind of facial plastic surgery just like everyone else.

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GUEST POST from Arlen Meyers

Innovation starts with the right mindset. So, if you are a sick care professional, like a doctor, nurse, pharmacist, dentist or allied health professional interested in entrepreneurship or a non-clinical career pivot, then you not only have to change your mind about things, you will have to change your mindset as well.

The 14 scales measured by the second (and final) version of the Entrepreneurial Mindset Profile (EMP).

Personality Scales

Independence: The desire to work with a high degree of independence (e.g., I’m uncomfortable when expected to follow others’ rules.)

Preference for Limited Structure: A preference for tasks and situations with little formal structure (e.g., I find it boring to work on clearly structured tasks.)

Nonconformity: A preference for acting in unique ways; an interest in being perceived as unique (e.g., I like to stand out from the crowd.)

Risk Acceptance: A willingness to pursue an idea or a desired goal even when the probability of succeeding is low (e.g., I’m willing to take a certain amount of risk to achieve real success.)

Action Orientation: A tendency to show initiative, make decisions quickly, and feel impatient for results (e.g., I tend to make decisions quickly.)

Passion: A tendency to experience one’s work as exciting and enjoyable rather than tedious and draining (e.g., I’m passionate about the work that I do.)

Need to Achieve: The desire to achieve at a high level (e.g., I want to be the best at what I do.)

Skill Scales

Future Focus: The ability to think beyond the immediate situation and plan for the future (e.g., I’m focused on the long term.)

Idea Generation: The ability to generate multiple and novel ideas, and to find multiple approaches for achieving goals (e.g., Sometimes the ideas just bubble out of me.)

Execution: The ability to turn ideas into actionable plans; the ability to implement ideas well (e.g., I have a reputation for being able to take an idea and make it work.)

Self-Confidence: A general belief in one’s ability to leverage skills and talents to achieve important goals (e.g., I am a self-confident person.)

Optimism: The ability to maintain a generally positive attitude about various aspects of one’s life and the world (e.g., Even when things aren’t going well, I look on the bright side.)

Persistence: The ability to bounce back quickly from disappointment, and to remain persistent in the face of setbacks (e.g., I do not give up easily.)

Interpersonal Sensitivity: A high level of sensitivity to and concern for the well-being of those with whom one works (e.g., I’m sensitive to others’ feelings.)

Undergraduates are accepted to medical school, in part, on their mindsets, which, given the list above, is counter to the the culture of clinical training. So, doctors who want to practice their entrepreneurial mindset will have a conflict of consciousness.

What is a “mindset”? Experts vary, but, fundamentally, is it how and why we think about things the way we do and how we interpret the world. We use mental models, that, unlike most personality traits, are malleable, not fixed, and that drive our emotions and behavior.

Mental models are created by the internal conversations we have with ourselves and, those conversations, psychologists claim, create feelings that drive behavior. Negative thoughts drive negative behavior and vice versa. In other works, you will become what you think.

Given how entrepreneurs and biomedical professionals evolve in their careers, there are some similarities between the two mindsets.

OVERLAPPING CLINICAL AND ENTREPRENEURIAL MINDSETS

However, there are some fundamental differences too, like different:

1. Cultures
2. Personality traits
3. Set of professional norms and ethics
4. Knowledge, skills, abilities and competencies
5. Problem solvers v problem seekers
6. Customer centered v paternalistic
7. Networks
8. Perceptions of user defined value
9. Incentives and payment systems
10. How they use or waste resources
11. Business models
12. Rules,legal and regulatory environment
13. Ways they look for innovation: one in the New England Journal, the other in the Wall Street Journal

Mindset is but one of many entrepreneurial competencies you will need to succeed. Others include:

Opportunity recognition pertains to one’s ability to scan and search for new information, connect the dots between incidents that appear to be unrelated with limited cues, and recognize patterns or ideas that suggest potential opportunities in the myriad cues or signals that they receive (Baron, 2006).

Conveying a compelling vision/seeing the future reflects an individual’s proclivity for effective communication where he or she can translate his or her vision into condensed, clear, and intriguing messages to important stakeholders (Chen, Yao, & Kotha 2009).

Ability to maintain focus yet adapt speaks to the entrepreneurial experience. This ccan include considerable ambiguity and uncertainty, significant obstacles, ongoing emergence of new opportunities, and continuous change in circumstances (Morris et al., 2012). The entrepreneur must continuously adapt, change, modify, and switch while maintaining a self-regulated focus in the midst of volatile conditions (Haynie & Shepherd, 2009)

Resilience captures the cognitive tendency of an individual to cope with stressful, adverse, and devastating situations, to be able to recover from failures, and to constructively sustain his or her efforts to pursue goals. In reality, successful entrepreneurs are not easily beaten by distress or rejections. Instead, they are able to remain or resume a calm state of mind, to tactically frame and analyze problems, dig into the root cause of failures, and to search for ways to get back on track again (Sinclair & Wallston, 2004).

Interdisciplinary teamwork and collaboration refers to the ability of individuals to form partnerships with a team of professionally diverse individuals in a participatory, collaborative, and coordinated approach to share decisionmaking around issues as the means to achieving improved health outcomes (Orchard & Curran, 2003).

Assessing the feasibility of an opportunity emphasizes the need for innovators to make evaluations or judgments on whether emerging information or changes would lead to viable opportunities with profit potential (McMullen & Shepherd, 2006).

Self-Efficacy/Confidence relates to an entrepreneur’s self-confidence and selfassurance about his or her ability to take on challenges, to perform certain set of tasks as needed or expected, and to control processes, contingencies, or consequences in the entrepreneurial pursuit (Bandura, 1997; Baron & Markman, 2005; Tierney & Farmer, 2002).

Building and using networks concerns one’s ability to establish, maintain, and structure his or her contact network(s) in ways that foster relationships, enhance access to opportunities and/or resources, and potentially lead to realization of his or her objectives (Aldrich, 1999).

Tenacity/Perseverance refers to the extent to which entrepreneurs are committed to seeing their vision through, to endure the long journey to carry out venture creation, to work fervently despite challenges or adversity, to maintain interests, and persist with efforts in achieving goals (Duckworth & Quinn 2009; Hmieleski & Corbett, 2006).

Understanding of healthcare systems entails having a firm grasp of the various components of the health system and an understanding of the major issues faced by the stakeholders.

Resource leveraging/Bootstrapping describes the need to overcome resource constraints by leveraging resources from others. It also reflects a tendency for innovators to demonstrate an inclination towards effectual rather than causal reasoning in bringing together unique resource combinations (Greene &Brown, 1997; Honig, 2001; Politis, Winborg, & Dahlstrand, 2011).

Creative problem solving/Imaginativeness is characterized by Schumpeter (1942), who posited that creative destruction plays a key role in the innovation process. Innovators who start something are engaged in a process of creative imagination in which opportunities are exploited by continuously combining resources in new ways (Kirzner, 1973; Chiles, Bluedorn, & Gupta, 2007).

Design thinking is a human-centered, prototype-driven process for innovation that can be applied to product, service, and business design. It is the process of questioning, observing, and experimenting, so that you can become better equipped to capture valuable information and develop new business ideas. It requires experimentation in order to understand how things work, to test new business ideas or different approaches, and to look for valuable insights that may emerge in the process (Brown, 2008).

Guerrilla skills is a label adapted from a warfare context, describing approaches that center on clever ways to take advantage of one’s surroundings, do more with less, to rely upon unconventional tactics, and to utilize resources not recognized by others in accomplishing tasks within entrepreneurial firms (Schindehutte, Morris & Pitt, 2008).

Risk management/mitigation involves the systematic monitoring, assessing, hedging, transferring, and/or exploiting multifaceted risks encountered as an innovation initiative unfolds. Risk-aversive attitudes discourage individuals from innovative activities (Cramera et al., 2002), while successful entrepreneurs are willing to first recognize and bear the uncertainty or risk needed to take entrepreneurial actions, and are able to manage risk rather than simply trying to avoid risk (McMullen & Shepherd, 2006).

Cross disciplinary knowledge refers to an understanding of the connections, interrelations, and interactions between different fields of knowledge (Mosseri, 2006).

Change management is the ability to understand and manage driving forces, visions, and processes that fuel large-scale transformation (Kottler, 2011).

Information management is the collection and management of information from one or more sources and the distribution of that information to one or more audiences.

Behavioral economics refers to an understanding of psychological, social, cognitive, and emotional factors on the economic decisions of individuals and institutions, and the consequences for market prices, returns, and resource allocation (Lin, 2012). It is the understanding that drives decision making.

Leadership There is a strong link between leadership and innovation

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Mindset Innovation starts with the right mindset

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In my view, about 1% of doctors, engineers and scientists live at the intersection of the two circles.

Consequently, many health professionals struggle to make the transition to a combined clinical entrepreneurial mindset from a pure clinical mindset. Likewise, here are 10 reasons why non-sick care entrepreneurs stumble along the life science innovation roadmap.

Achieving success as a biomedical or sick care entrepreneur requires resetting your mind, not just changing it. Doing so takes time, mental discipline, knowledge, practice, self-improvement, experience, study and coaching… sort of like your residency training. Except, in most instances, it will take more than four years since old habits don’t die quickly.

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GUEST POST from Arlen Meyers

Entrepreneurs are not wild risk takers. On the contrary, they are risk managers, balancing risk with return and de-risking ventures and decisions as best as they can. Risk management generally falls into categories of 1) legal risk, 2) operational/business risk and 3) personal and corporate financial asset risk. But, another infrequently considered risk, particularly for intrapreneurs i.e. employees trying to act like entrepreneurs in their organizations, be they academic or non-academic, is career risk. Shifting from a full time employee to a part time one to run a strartup, for example, is even riskier to your career.

Here is the sickcare intrapreneur innovation roadmap.

Here is why it’s so hard to be a physician intrapreneur

Here is a physician entrepreneur survival guide

Consider a full time faculty member or corporate employee with benefits who is thinking about their career risk if they try to innovate or practice intrapreneurship or run a startup.

Career risk factors include:

1. Failure risk to their organization that will impact their performance review
2. Promotion (and tenure) risk and the opportunity costs
3. Job security risk
4. Reputation damage risk
5. Career derailment risk
6. Salary risk
7. Re-entry or future employment risk
8. Personal liability risk
9. Peer pressure risk
10. Social or emotional isolation risk
11. Emotional risk of personal failure
12. Financial opportunity cost risk

One way to innovate and mitigate your career risk is to be a good rebel, not a bad one.

Here are three things rebels do better:

1.  First, they recognize that other people look at us with more respect, not less, when we break social norms.
2. The second thing rebels assume is that rules can be changed—and they change them.
3. Third, rebels embrace the unfamiliar rather than being threatened by it.

Like all risks, career risk cannot be totally eliminated, only managed or mitigated. Before you decide to pursue your next entre/intrapreneurial venture, include a career risk assessment and mitigation strategy before making the leap.

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GUEST POST from Arlen Meyers

Creating a new venture, championing a new process or offering a new course or program is exciting. However, statistically, it is more likely you will fail than succeed and there is a fine line between determination and pig-headed optimism. You might not have the skills to do what you love. At some point, you will have to consider quitting and moving on.

Quitting is not a value in the entrepreneurial lexicon. We are all encouraged to follow our dreams, no matter the cost. It is a myth. “Winners quit all the time. They just quit the right stuff at the right time.” Some, given stress and burnout levels, would rather see you keep trying, even if it kills you. Don’t let it.

You should keep a failure resume. What’s the point of such self-flagellation?

Because you learn much more from failure than success, and honestly analyzing one’s failures can lead to the type of introspection that helps us grow — as well as show that the path to success isn’t a straight line.

Your failure resume would include:

1. Schools that didn’t accept you
2. Papers that were rejected
3. Places where you faced disciplinary action or were fired
4. Companies or projects you started that were a bust
5. Grants you applied for but never received
6. Lack of promotions or failure to get tenure
7. Failure to get a salary increase you requested
8. Lousy job assessments or online reviews
9. Personal failings
10. Poor teaching, student or audience assessments of your performance
11. You have limited emotional intelligence or lack entrepreneurial competencies
12. You have a significant personality disorder or pyschopathology

Perseverance has received lots of support in recent years from a variety of schools of research. One is from psychologists studying grit. In fact, there’s a large body of work showing that perseverance may have a harmful downside. 

Here are some signs that it might be time to hang up your cleats and move on:

1. It is not fun any more

2. It is making you sick

3. The people you work for or with are unethical

4. You realize that the window of opportunity has permanently closed

5. Your innerpreneurial instincts are telling you that you are doing what you are doing for the wrong reasons.

6. You are willing to take personal responsibility for your failure and apply the lessons to your next initiative

7. You have shown that your business model is fundamentally flawed and that you don’t have the time, resources or interest in fixing it

8. You have changed your priorities

9. Your life is out of balance and practicing entrepreneurship is further tipping the scales

10. You believe the fates are working against you. Truth be TOLD, sometimes they are.

There is a difference between quitting a project and quitting on yourself. Sh$t happens and learning from mistakes and how you adapted to the inevitable slings and arrows of misfortune shapes us all, if we let it. It will discourage and destroy us if we don’t.

Being innovative isn’t just about what you start — it’s about what you stop. “You don’t have the capacity – the time, resources or energy – to do the new things because you are busy maintaining the old ones,” explains innovation expert Jeff DeGraff. Don’t get caught in this trap: Figure out what practices or ideas are no longer serving you and make room for new ones.

“Stopping things is hard. It’s full of feelings of loss, disappointment and failure. It takes more than creativity. It takes courage to stop what you’ve been doing to make room for the things your organization wants to start doing now.”

The history of business and innovation proves that some of the biggest winners have been the biggest quitters at some point in their career. The important point, is that, after quitting, they continued to move forward, not sideways or backwards, with their next idea.

Along the way, tidying up is a good idea. Let go of the banana and don’t slip on the skin.

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GUEST POST from Arlen Meyers

Many have praised the value of a liberal arts education in business, to the point where some even think the MFA is the new MBA. One of the founders of my alma mater Dickinson College, Dr. Benjamin Rush, thought it would be a good idea to create a school that trained the leaders of the newly formed nation, after the signing of the Treaty of Paris ending the American Revolution in 1783. The backbone of this revolutionary educational model is a solid foundation in the liberal arts. This “liberal education” teaches students to embrace new ways of thinking, solve problems creatively and address important social issues purposefully.(http://www.dickinsonson.edu). I think the main benefit of my liberal arts education has been learning to connect the dots, see patterns and leave space for the unexplainable.

Most of you who are reading this are technical, linear, analytical, left -brain, ESTJ’s who have been taught that the shortest distance between a problem and a solution is a straight line. You know the drill:

• Problem Definition – including problem analysis, redifinition, and all aspects associated with defining the problem clearly.
• Idea Generation – The divergent process of coming up with ideas.
• Idea Selection – The convergent process of reducing all the many ideas into realistic solutions
• Idea Implementation – Turning the refined ideas in reality.
• Processes

There are lots of ways to ideate and skin the cat. For 192 ways to solve a problem, check http://www.mycoted.com/Category:Creativity_Techniques

Unfortunately, research indicates and experience teaches us that innovation doesn’t work that way most of the time. The technology push-market pull model proposes that success happens when, during a deliberative, data-driven process riddled with MBA’s and spreadsheets, a problem is matched with a solution. Magic happens when technopreneurs meet market perceivers. The “structured serendipidy” model, on the other hand, is closer to reality. Ask the guy who discovered penicillin.

In his book, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation Steven Johnson discusses how serendipity works in innovation, along with six other patterns throughout history: the adjacent possible, liquid networks, the slow hunch, error, exaptation and platforms.

Bryan W. Mattimore, in his new book Idea Stormers: How to Lead and Inspire Creative Breakthroughs, outlines seven ideation techniques that consistently deliver excellent results and can be used to address nearly any kind of creative challenge:

1. Questioning assumptions

2. Opportunity redefinition

3. Wishing

4. Triggered brainwalking

5. Semantic intuition

6. Picture prompts

7. Worst idea

The common thread is that the roots of innovation are anything but linear or predicable, but , instead result from a combination of everything from evolving networks, the rise of the modern city, to happy accidents.

Unfortunately, sitting around waiting for the “Ah-hah” is not the best use of your time. Follow the recommended steps for developing your innovation, but reserve some space in your cerebral cortex for ambiguity, the unexpected and luck. Recognize that your agonizingly prepared Plan A is unlikely to be what ultimately succeeds, so reserve space for Plan B, C or whatever works.

Being bored some of the time is not a bad idea either. Here’s the case for doing nothing for the next 15 minutes.

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GUEST POST from Arlen Meyers

In their classic book on negotiation and persuasion, Fisher and Ury outline the steps to get to yes.

They suggest the following approach:

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GUEST POST from Arlen Meyers

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GUEST POST from Arlen Meyers

 In his new book, Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus shares his vision for a kinder, gentler planet. It starts with recognizing what he describes as the inherent cruelty of capitalism, the need to value the abilities of every human being and understanding that saving the environment must be a collective effort.

Now, Pope Francis has thrown his Papal tiara into the ring.

To create and spread the harvest of global wealth creation, Yunus emphasizes going back to our entrepreneurial roots, making low interest loans to those most in need (microfinance) and creating social enterprises that are a balance between selfishness (making money for ourselves) and selflessness (helping others create wealth for themselves and, in so doing, changing the human condition). While corporate social responsibility is the latest fad, most companies don’t take it far enough. Giving fish, or Todd’s shoes, isn’t the same as teaching people how to fish or start their own shoe business. The goal of the latter, as in almost ever social enterprise, is to demonstrate measurable scaleable impact.

Such thinking highlights the conflict between the ethics and purpose of medicine and the ethics and purpose of business. In systems, like in the US, where medicine is a business, the contrast in even starker.

However, as noted in a recent article , the dual purpose playbook requires focusing on four key management practices for an organization to do well and do good at the same time:

1. setting and monitoring dual goals
2. structuring the organization to support both goals
3. hiring and socializing employees to embrace them
4. practicing dual minded leadership

Here are some ideas that might help us reach some of the UN’s sustainable development goals:

1. Include social entrepreneurship as part of biomedical entrepreneurship education programs and emphasize the relationships between social determinants, like education, and health.
2. Teach biomedical entrepreneurs more about accounting, finance and business law
3. Include and achieve learning objectives in international entrepreneurship in the curriculum.
4. Judge startup ventures by their triple bottom line impact. The TBL is an accounting framework that incorporates three dimensions of performance: social, environmental and financial. This differs from traditional reporting frameworks as it includes ecological (or environmental) and social measures that can be difficult to assign appropriate means of measurement. The TBL dimensions are also commonly called the three Ps: people, planet and profits, or, the 3 Ps.
5. Provide microfinance loans to patient entrepreneurs
6. Use more patient funded business models
7. Tap into the desire to do well by doing good
8. Include discussions about creating non-profit v for profit business entities
9. Create a sub-ecosystem focusing on using biomedical, clinical and digital health innovation as a social enterprise in accelerators, scalerators, venture conferences, pitch competitions and courses.

10. Showcase and celebrate biomedical and clinical social entrepreneurs

11. Create products and services that address the social determinants of health and ways to reduce their inequities that contributes to disparate health outcomes. Breakfast and a bedroom has more impact than data. The biggest bang for the buck comes from helping educate at risk populations, like students who are first generation, marginalized or excluded girls, those in the lower socioeconomic classes, self identified minorities and others, like the disabled and recently released prisoners.

12. Incorporate social enterprise into medical systems science education.

Here is the mission driven business model canvas:

Here are some differences between the mission driven and the elusive medical business model canvas

Here are the top five differences between not for profit and for profit hospitals.

Many questions have arisen regarding hospitals’ status as tax-exempt organizations.

Conscious capitalism is the rational alternative approach, dedicated to advancing humanity, while using tried and proven business principles. The idea has four principles guiding and underlying every business:

1. Higher purpose. Business can and should be done with a higher purpose in mind, not just with a view to maximizing profits. A compelling sense of purpose creates an extraordinary degree of engagement for all stakeholders and catalyzes tremendous organizational energy.
2. Stakeholder orientation. Recognizing the interdependent nature of life and the human foundations and business, a business needs to create value with and for its various stakeholders (customers, employees, vendors, investors, communities, etc.). Like the life forms in an ecosystem, healthy stakeholders lead to a healthy business system.
3. Conscious leadership. Conscious leaders understand and embrace the higher purpose of business and focus on creating value for and harmonizing the human interests of the business stakeholders. They recognize the integral role of culture and purposefully cultivate a conscious culture.
4. Conscious culture. This is the ethos – the values, principles, practices – underlying the social fabric of a business, which permeates the atmosphere of a business and connects the stakeholders to each other and to the purpose, people and processes that comprise the company.

Medicine in the US is a business. However, it is also a social enterprise, joining many othercompanies and industries practicing social entrepreneurship. Compassionate capitalism is another way to do well by doing good.

Bioentrepreneurship is a means towards an end-creating user or beneficiary defined value through the deployment of innovation. Whether that end is selfless or selfish or combination of both is your decision. What you decide will impact the future of our planet and the people who inhabit it. It will also put a smile on the faces of your stockholders and employees.

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GUEST POST from Arlen Meyers

Around this time of year you will start to see prognostications and articles about sick care future directions and trends and how you can take advantage of them. Here’s my list.

One that almost everyone agrees on is the global aging population and the dropping fertility rates.

For example, Japan has one of the world’s fastest-growing elderly populations and a tight labor market. The combination of these factors is driving innovation and spawning startups in the elder care space. And like the Walkman and e-mail displaying cellphones-the resulting devices may go global over the next few years. Of the 92 Japanese startups seeking to be valued at $1 billion or more, 25 are focused on health care. Most of the backing doesn’t come from venture capitalists, but from large companies looking for growth businesses. For example, Tatsuya Takahashi got support from Sharp and Canon when he co-founded Z-Works in 2015, seeking to improve patient monitoring after he missed being present when his grandmother and father died. Two years later he formed a partnership with a unit of insurance company Sompo Holdings to put his gear into more than 100 nursing homes in Japan. At a nursing home outside Tokyo, whose residents average 86 years old, 48 rooms have been equipped with four devices that monitor the occupants and stream data to the nurses’ station using software designed by Z-Works.

Here’s a story about the growing numbers of those in the sandwich generation and the costs involved to both when kids move back home after graduation.

A 2014 study by the Pew Research Center found that 52% of the US residents in their 60s are financially supporting either a parent or an adult child, up from 45% in 2005. Things are not that much different in other countries.

Entrepreneurs in almost every industry are noticing and trying to ride the silver tsunami all the way to the bank. Look for;

1. High tech solutions, using gerontechnologies. Alexa, where did I leave my keys? When is my next doctor’s appointment? Maybe you can get a deal on Black Friday on a robot for your loved one.
2. High touch solutions, creating alternative living arrangements from tiny homes in your back yard, to over 55 communities to smart cities
3. Intergenerational anti-loneliness and social isolation solutions
4. Investment funds targeted to solving the problems of the aging population
5. The rise of aging not-for-profits
6. Finding ways to improve the caregiver experience
7. Rethinking sick care jobs, such as community care workers
8. Social media and the entertainment industry, along with their advertisers, used to ignore anyone who was not between the ages of 18-24. That has changed as we see more and more “older” actors and models and aging themes reflected in movies, plays and literature.
9. The financial services industry continues to scramble to capture more and more of people worried about outliving their savings, including seniors and their kids taking care of them.
10. Sick care IT and digital health entrepreneurs are creating ways to help older patients share their information with family members and other care givers.
11. Senior travel and hospitality offerings
12. Senior dating apps

There is always opportunity when edge technologies and trends collide. Best Buy will try to capitalize on where loneliness, DIY medicine, remote sensing and remote patient monitoring, telemedicine, aging at home and consumer medical electronics meet. However, using these products will , for the 20-25% of those in rural towns with out broadband access, require closing the sick care digital divide.

Of course, politicians are pandering to papa, too.

But when you look deep within, from a human perspective, the business of aging too often falls short of delivering solutions that meet fundamental societal needs. Aging has been good for business, but can we honestly say that business has been good for aging?

It used to be that if you wanted to take the social pulse of the nation, you would watch sit-coms. Now you have to stream and binge on Netflix watching the Kominsky Method.

So what is the future? You tell me. In the future, the top jobs are robot engineer and elder caregiver.

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