Coughlin, founder and director of MIT’s AgeLab, believes that “the power and potential of technology to address the lifestyle preferences and needs of an older population, and those who care about them, must be fully and creatively exploited.” Yet, many industries see older customers as a captured market with a firmly established set of preferences.
But Coughlin sees disruptive demographics driving today’s aging population, and he our current markets unprepared for the disruption. “We are losing time in creating products for an older population” that values technologically sophisticated solutions that are also designed to be “cool, desirable, sexy, and fashionable.”