Don't base your design and market input upon the experiences of your grandmother

Laurie Orlov's recent blog has her 10 tips for startups entering the ageing business.

It is nice to see that the driver for US market innovations is often the same as that in the UK - the inability of the founder's grandparents to do something, be that use a mobile phone or take their medication.

I am sure that there have been amazingly successful products and services created on the basis of a casual observation but the point is that is the starting point for product design. For every grandparent that cannot use a mobile phone there will be one that can, or may two or ten or a hundred. Maybe your grandparents are particularly inept of precocious users of technology. Who knows until you do some research.

Look at the blog posting and what you will see is basic marketing common sense, something that is too often jettisoned in the ageing business. Dick Stroud