A cross-sector commitment to the advancement of entrepreneurship throughout the aging services continuum is supporting industry growth and sustainability while providing significant benefits to assisted living residents and staff. Reciprocal Entrepreneurship, which is simply defined as, “entrepreneurship inspiring entrepreneurship”, is delivering significant advances in key areas required for continuing industry emergence.
Sectorforce, a strategic alliance of high-growth industry associations, will launch a Reciprocal Entrepreneurship initiative during the last quarter of 2011 in order to advance entrepreneurship throughout the Aging Services continuum, which will extend to include other high-growth and emerging industries and sectors.
Sectorforce was formed to advance Reciprocal Entrepreneurship, a human capital management strategy designed to increase the self-reliance of high-growth and emerging industry associations while broadening their capacities and capabilities to offer significantly enhanced membership benefits. Entrepreneurship that is efficient, systemic, large-scale and sustainable will help associations to justify and earn the financial and other resource support required to provide business-building membership services that directly improve the bottom line. Sectorforce will focus on the Aging Services sector and represent the interests of small, medium and large-sized for-profit and not-for-profit companies and organizations. Reciprocal entrepreneurship is simply defined as a process through which “entrepreneurship inspires entrepreneurship”.
The process includes the integration of human resource, risk, benefits administration and other outsourcing solutions, along with health brokerage, financial, retirement and other services. They are enhanced by cost-effective cloud computing innovations, and made widely accessible and collaborative through broadband and other information and communication technologies. These components help to create a robust membership services portfolio that will expand rapidly through the economies of scale and scope. Reciprocal Entrepreneurship is also designed to support key areas of the FCC National Broadband Adoption Plan, which include education, training, employment and small business development, along with health, housing, energy, public safety and security.
Aging services is a rapidly emerging and multi-dimensional enterprise. A variety of stakeholders is aligning diverse yet related entrepreneurial activities and strategies to meet rising employer and industry challenges. The focus areas are education, training, employment, benefits administration, retiree and financial services and professional development within the continuum of human resource, workforce, small business and asset-based community economic development. Entrepreneurship is an ever-evolving industry and community asset. The process will extend to assist in cross-industry brand, marketing, business and funding development, along with diversity and social responsibility.
Reciprocal Entrepreneurship benefits from the encouragement for entrepreneurial growth by the White House Office of Innovation, the US Small Business Administration and SCORE, along with the guidance and support of the US Departments of Labor (Employment and Training Administration), Education, Health and Human Services, Agriculture, Veterans Affairs and Commerce. In fact, the public, private and philanthropic communities are responding favorably to industry initiatives that demonstrate the quality and levels of entrepreneurial vision, thought and action that can deliver innovative, efficient, systemic, large-scale and sustainable outcomes.
The political climate, sense of urgency, cross-sector support for entrepreneurship and current cross-industry capabilities are helping to enable the entire Aging Services continuum to transform Reciprocal Entrepreneurship into a national industry-building asset. The process mobilizes a generically designed model that aligns the shared missions of industry associations, affiliated non-profit organizations and funding sources with the varied for-profit goals and objectives of association members, sponsors, strategic partners and other stakeholders.
Broadband, cloud computing and other information and communication technologies will collectively empower the expansion of Reciprocal Entrepreneurship into several high-growth industries and sectors by utilizing the economies of scale and scope.
By the year 2030, it is estimated that the older population will almost double. This is going to have a profound effect on the aging services industry in terms of the number of people requiring services, the types of services that will be required, the human capital and specialized work forces needed to properly serve industry growth and the level of funding necessary to support the increased aging population. (IBIS World Industry Reports)