Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Baby Boomer Business Ideas/ Idea Four: Miscellaneous Boomer Collectives

by Dr. Ellen Brandt


In the last story in this sequence, we broached the idea of forming Creative Collectives of experienced, skilled, well-educated, and talented Boomers and other "Grays," who would band together to produce and distribute Content appealing to audiences over age 50, whether in the form of television, webcasts, film, music, theater, or any other Media format. (
Baby Boomer Business Ideas/ Idea Three: Creative Collectives)

The Boomer Collective concept need not be limited to Media, however.

If whoever is in charge of our current Youth-worshipping economy refuses to recognize how valuable the already more than 2 out of 5 Americans aged 50 and over are to this country's continued economical viability . . . . Well, let's demonstrate it ourselves by banding together and producing pretty much everything!

A few areas of endeavor where Collectives might take hold:


***** Software: In this application-crazed environment, let's show we can outdo 16-year-olds trained as Gamers.

We've heard put-out-to-pasture engineers and assorted IT professionals are now legion. Let them become the new whiz-kids in the software field, in the process producing digital products their age-peers - also legion - might need and enjoy.


***** Invention: Boomer inventors are certainly out there working individually to design and pursue patents for everything under the sun.

We think it's time groups of them got together and assembled into Gray Think Tanks of inventors, designing and engineering products and services with special appeal to the soon-to-be-nearly-one-half-of-us over age 50.


***** Retail: Later in this series, we'll discuss some of our ideas for retailers geared to the Boomer population.

Some Gray retailers might be formed in the Collective mode, as some food businesses have been for decades.


***** Hospitality: Similarly, groups of Grays with solid backgrounds in restaurants, hotels, tourism, or events might want to gear such businesses to both peer audiences and the general public, drawing on a ready-made talent pool of exceptionally experienced people who might actually be cheaper to hire - not to mention more productive - than younger people with little experience (and possibly bad attitudes).

People over 50 are, in general, extremely good at any work that involves dealing with and pleasing the general public. Chances are we've already been doing such work for decades - and what's more, we like it.


***** Development: Future stories in this series will also cover the kinds of housing, business real estate, and community planning our Gray population might like to see more of. Gray Development Collectives could be important in such - one suspects, highly profitable - efforts.

We can see development Collectives of talented and experienced architects, city planners, engineers, retailers, and infrastructure experts of all kinds coming together to found exciting, unique, and economically viable communities focused on over-50 Americans, their needs and desires.


***** Politics: Envisioning healthy and happy and economically thriving lives for Boomers and other Grays  is not only the job of commerce, of course, but also the job of effective politics.

As we've pointed out in other stories, an astonishing 1/2 of eligible voters in our U.S. elections next year - Yes, in 2016! - will be aged 50 and older, a statistic that should also apply in the 2020, 2024, and 2028 election cycles.

In general, an extremely badly informed and/or deceptive Mainstream Media - one hopes it is the former, but fears it is the latter - has kept many Americans in our Gray population literally in the dark about our growing numbers, our growing strength, and our growing potential power to change our own lives - as well as the lives of our fellow Americans - for the better.

We believe that's about to change dramatically, and that Boomers and others over age 50 will begin to reassert ourselves as vibrant and productive political activists starting with the current election cycle.

Many - in fact, the majority - of elected officials at every level of government, as well as their staffs and closest supporters, are our fellow Grays. But so far, there have been few campaigns, issues-oriented or otherwise, geared towards and focused on either Gray voters or Gray issues.

As our power - and our pure numbers - become more widely acknowledged, however, we believe it's likely that Boomer-plus Political Collectives, focusing on specific candidates who speak for us and issues we consider important will spring up all around the country, particularly at the local and state levels.

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Why this sequence of stories?


With over 2 in 5 Americans already aged 50 or over - a proportion that may escalate to close to 1 in 2 Americans within a decade or so, it is imperative that our "Gray Population" no longer be considered a "peripheral" or "specialty" market, but rather be acknowledged for what it truly is: a vitally important part of the United States economy.

To that end, we need to encourage all sorts of new businesses, new products, and new services that our "Gray Population" actually wants and needs, as decided by the "Gray Population" itself, not by marketers and technologists decades younger.

We need to encourage Boomer-and-older entrepreneurs; help them as actively as we're helping younger Founders; and fund them at least as aggressively, via traditional venture capital and other means, as we're funding other groups of new business owners.

We're offering this sequence of articles in the spirit of generational solidarity and generosity - and we hope other writers, thinkers, and activists will generate and share ideas of their own.


Let the Boomer Renaissance begin!


Ellen Brandt, Ph.D. is Founder of the Bring Back the Meritocracy! project, an ambitious and broad-ranging non-profit, non-partisan, non-controversial effort to help the "Highly-Educated But Under-Employed" in the U.S. and abroad. Read about it at:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/114091094386273464410/114091094386273464410/about/p/pub