Technology's Impact on the Fitness Industry - IHRSA 2010
/At IHRSA 2010 in San Diego last week I had the chance to share views with leaders on where the fitness industry is heading and how technology is at the forefront of its future. The presentation and my video recap are included below.
The presentation was broken into 4 key parts. The first section recaped the increasingly rapid exponential advancement of technologies and what the key trends specifically are, with examples of how those trends are starting to impact the business today. Next, was a review of the tranformation of business models which are being greatly impacted by lower communication and storage costs in addition to the ubiquity of the Internet which is increasingly shifting power to buyers away from sellers. A focus of this section was how bricks and mortar business models are all suffering from declines in margins as costs have surged and pricing power has diminished. Additionally the concept of the "long-tail" was shared. Third, was coverage of innovation, including the difference between sustaining and disruptive innovations. This section of the presentation addressed business model innovation and relied on key concepts of C.K. Prahalad and others. Finally, my predictions for the fitness industry were shared: non-facility competition will surge in the coming years; bricks and mortar fitness businesses will deliver new models that merge the digital and physical worlds for higher levels of customer service at lower costs; wellness will become increasingly mainstream as the "long tail" of the fitness industry; and the future of the extant industry in general will largely be dictated by its present leadership changing its mindset. As I pointed out, the top 10 vaccum tube companies did not participate in the transistor revolution.
Please review the presentation below and see my video recap. Thanks IHRSA for inviting me to contribute.
