In his excellent new book, Flash Foresight: How to See the Invisible and Do the Impossible, Daniel Burrus makes a point of discussing the opportunity for entrepreneurial ventures aimed at Baby Boomers. There were 78 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964. Burrus says 80 percent of the nation's wealth is controlled by people over the age of 50. So what are entrepreneurs doing about it? Forward-looking ones are taking the "hard trend" of demographic certainty to innovate. Some ideas that are already on the market, or should be:
- Personal elevators retrofitted onto the outside of homes
Video games that place you at Woodstock, the 1968 Democratic Convention or the Chicago 7 trial and let you interact with friends - Late-life financial planning products
- "Unretirement homes" that combine the health-care resources of nursing homes with upscale style and design
- "Green" funeral homes and boomer cemetaries that match Boomer attitudes about body disposal
- RFID tags and other technologies to help seniors read prescription bottles by getting the information off the bottle and onto computer or smartphone screens, which have more room and capacity to explain drugs.
So, what are some of the entrepreneurial innovations you're hearing about (or creating) aimed at the Boomer set?
We agree. We have been bootstrapping our business, Boomer Radio (www.boomerradio.com) for ten years now. Our audience is very appreciative. While over the air broadcasting has disenfranchised the Boomers, we have chosen to serve them with music from their past and genres that they have embraced as they have grown older.
Thanks for a great column.