Fitness Industry Innovation — Bryan O'Rourke shares his thoughts and views on consumer, technology, business and health trends.

Business models fascinate me. As I've shared before, "If your industry, organization or self is not actively evaluating its model - you better start now. How products and services are conceived, developed, distributed and sold is increasingly changing as the result of a variety of factors." Of course I'm keeping the fitness and wellness industries in mind here and if you're involved in that space like I am you better as well!

Perhaps you've heard of the book, "What's Mine Is Your's - The Rise Of Collaborative Consumption", by Rachel Botsman (smart AND beautiful) and Roo Rodgers (MS in Economics : I Luv That). On the left are examples of business models that reflect this trend. After reading the book I've been thinking, "Hey How Might This Apply To Fitness Facilities Business Models?"

A common health club model is "membership"; which in theory provides unlimited use of a place for getting fit. Problem is MOST "Members" don't visit their club very often. Would it make sense for people to join forces and demand that they're "memberships" (when they're not being used) could be used by others as a form of collaborative consumption ? What are the implications of that ?

Please contact me, Bryan O'Rourke, and let me know your thoughts. What forms of Collaborative Consumption will appear in the fitness and wellness industries and why ? Before you share your views and in the meantime watch the interesting video below that explains the concepts behind "Collaborative Consumption" as well as Rachel's TED talk. Great read Rachel and Roo. Thanks !

Collaborative Consumption Groundswell Video from rachel botsman on Vimeo.

I was watching the video below of Sir Ken Robinson's talk on changing education paradigms. It led me to draw some parallels between his views on needed changes in thinking around a broken approach to education and a similar situation regarding wellness and fitness. If you read my posts before, you know I like to write about the future and its promise. I believe the fitness and wellness industries must play an important role in that future. You see we increasingly hear of crises we face every day as nations and as humans. There is the recent economic crisis and the growing climate crises. We also know we face a global health crisis and it isn't getting better; despite all of the growth of the fitness and wellness business our world is getting less well. The World Health Organization predicts there will be 2.3 billion overweight adults in the world by 2015 and more than 700 million of them will be obese. Something, therefore, isn't working and this is what Robinson's video alludes to in general about education. The problem is fundamental: but why ?

The cost of providing health care now and increasingly in the future is bankrupting our economies; this is irrefutable and the rise of the global poor is only exacerbating the situation as obesity rears its head across the world. I won't even touch upon the diminished quality of life factors and impact on productivity.

This is a dilemma. We all want progress but we must acknowledge the consequences this progress creates. Interestingly the origins of all of these significant crises are the same. These challenges go unsolved because of their source. To change requires doing things differently; to innovate fundamentally; to change how we educate, manufacture, govern, and in the case of the fitness and wellness industry, help people be well. You see the way its being done now does not work - the evidence is undeniable.

Innovation is hard because it means doing something that people don't find very easy. It requires challenging what we take for granted, things that we think are obvious. The great problem for any reform is the tyranny of common sense. Things that people think, "Well, it can't be done another way because that's the way it's done." One of my favorite quotes is that of Daniel Boorstin who observed, "The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge. And therefore the fundamental barriers to progress in this regard are mostly the leaders of the very institutions created to forward their initial cause. Therefore I'd ask, is our industry, fitness and wellness, part of the globesity problem ? Is our thinking getting in the way of the solutions ?

What do you think ? Is the Fitness Industry , the Wellness Industry, contributing to the global obesity problem ? Why or why not ? Contact me, Bryan O'Rourke and share your views on this please and watch the video below for perspectives on how irrelevant mind sets are THE problem for education. The parallels are obvious to me - are they to you ?