New Offerings in the Hearing Industry

 Saving The Hearing Industry From Itself?

Can New Products Help Us Drive Relevance?

As part of the project that myself and others are undertaking on the future business model for audiology we have looked at new product offerings. One of the things that we have looked at is custom hearables and hearables in general. 

Hearables As A Product Offering

We already have hearables at our disposal, the LiNX2 is a hearable in the context that is currently used. The question is how can we use it in our practices and who do we offer it to? Not just that, what exactly are we offering and how do we achieve that offer?

Touching Tech Adopters

Hearables will be initally attractive to tech adopters, don't despair though this isn't a small niche. There are huge amounts of nerds just like me around the world that lust after the newest tech. Basic Linx2 hearing aids that are offered as custom ear phones / hearables will get these people excited. Hell even non custom Linx 2 will get these people excited. 

Change The Relevance

You offer these people a connected hearing aid, I dare you! They will giggle incessantly at you. You offer them custom earphones that connect to their iPhone or Android smart phone with ease, delivering power and control over all of their audio experiences and customisation of their everyday sound, and see what happens!

The Cost

If you go by the usual tech example, the cost initially can be high, as adoption increases it should become lower for mass market adoption. How do we do this? How exactly should we offer it and price it? Hell, you aren't going to be programming this stuff, you are merely going to take impressions and provide the equipment. Price it with a thirty per cent mark up. 

Differentiation

The key here is differentiation, these devices need to be different from the LiNX2 5, they need to be the GN ReSound Hearable. In order to deliver this we need to address GN ReSound as a group. It is simple, hey, we aren't trying to put the hammer on you here, but we see a whole new market place. So how about you organise a Linx2 device we can use with a differentiated stand alone set of apps? 

I am sure that GN ReSound will see the possible benefits of this particular product offering. 

To Succeed We Need To Diversify

To succeed, we need to diversify, we need to stay relevant. The question is who we need to be relevant to? We also need to ask what we need to be relevant to? Things are changing, our consumers are changing, what they want now, will not be what they want next year or the year after that. 

In order to deal with that we need to understand what they want. We need to understand that and embrace it. In embracing it, we can understand where we fit into it, where we remain relevant. The need for relevance is not just a need for us in the customer facing profession. Manufacturers too will need to remain relevant. 

Moving Forward As An Industry

We need to move forward as an industry, we need to discuss this as an industry. Our relevance and our future depends on it.