In March 2015, the Active Sports Clubs’ leadership team appeared on the cover of Club Solutions Magazine, before the company’s transition to Active Wellness.
Since the cover story, much has changed at the company in addition to the name change, such as a partnership with St. Joseph Health and the launch of a number of exciting new initiatives and projects.
Here, Mike Rucker, the vice president of technology for Active Wellness, discusses the Active Idea Lab.
This is Part 3 in a four-part series discussing key changes and projects at Active Wellness. To read Part 1, click here. To read Part 2, click here. To read part 3, click here.
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CS: What is the Active Idea Lab? What is its purpose?
MR: The purpose of Active Idea Lab is to create an environment — in both a physical and virtual setting — that supports and fosters innovation in fitness, health and wellness. The level of investment in digital health continues to increase at an explosive pace, and although there are significant resources for the “Health 2.0” community (from meet ups for like-minded individuals to physical spaces where startups can design and develop products), “ideas” directly related to “Fitness 2.0” are sparse. IHRSA has taken on an initiative this year to fix that with the IHRSA Technology Council. Similarly, Active Idea Lab is Active’s answer to this growing need and also to demonstrate our commitment to advancing fitness and wellness solutions to better serve the population.
CS: Why is the lab important?
MR: The velocity by which technology is advancing is staggering. However, adoption of technology has been historically fairly slow in the health club industry. There are a host of legitimate reasons why this is the case, but the downside is our industry is often behind the curve when it comes to delivering the user experience members have come to expect from modern innovation. One of the issues is that club operators are reluctant to pilot new technology, which in turn makes it hard for innovators to iterate their offerings and get them market ready. The result is that many good ideas do not get nurtured in a manner that enables them to evolve to being “go-to market” ready. To remedy this The Active Idea Lab provides innovators an opportunity to obtain measured results before reaching out to operators. By helping innovators eliminate certain risk, The Lab will help more companies succeed, and better products come to market.
CS: Who is involved in the lab?
MR: The Active Idea Lab is a collaborative effort across the entire Active Wellness organization. The concept originated from Active’s founders Jill Kinney, Bill McBride, and Carey White. I’ve been tasked with overseeing the effort.
CS: Can you provide an example of a project the lab has worked on?
MR: Active has always been on the forefront of innovation and has benefited — as well as been bruised — by always pushing the envelope when it comes to adopting new technology. Helping companies build better products is in our DNA. We helped pilot the MYZONE belts when they first went to market. We were an early Perkville partner when their rewards platform was first developed. We were the first enterprise client for Motionsoft’s MoSo platform. Under the official banner of the Active Idea Lab we are currently working with SceneSage and Tinoq, two up and comers hoping to revolutionize the industry with their unique product offering.
CS: What can other club operators learn from this concept?
MR: One of our goals is to disseminate what we continue to learn about successful fitness innovation and technology to our industry peers to help remedy the disparity of adoption of fitness technology in our industry. I spoke about this at IHRSA back in 2013, and Rasmus Ingerslev reminded us things have not gotten that much better since then at the 2016 Motionsoft Technology Summit. The Lab will continue to establish best practices, we will highlight companies that are doing it right so that others can learn, and we will provide various physical and virtual testing grounds so best-in-class ideas can thrive. The Active Idea Lab will be an open-environment so that everyone benefits.
CS: What is your vision for this concept?
MR: We are bullish on the future of The Lab and the sky is the limit. The first step is to establish the physical space in the Bay Area. Active Wellness has the advantage of being located in one of the most innovative areas in the world. We will also develop The Lab’s virtual space so that information is shared freely across the entire fitness ecosystem. In 2017, we will primarily focus on helping innovators, by working with entrepreneurs to develop better fitness products. We will then likely expand to create exploratory environments (e.g. the Apple Store) where members can freely test early-stage devices so that we are not just advancing the industry, but also bringing members into it.
