It feels great to be validated. We tell someone what we have been thinking and they agree. We read an article or attend a seminar and find few new ideas. Instead we find ideas similar to our own arranged from a fellow traveler’s perspective. Validation grounds us with the comfort that we are not out to lunch. We are too often way too close for realistic perspective. Not just preaching to the chior, but drinking the tea. We conduct studies and do market and survey research to seek more objectivity.
Another path to objectivity is from the outside. I once heard that many American politics professors are not Americans. Observers from other countries and cultures bring the benefit of perspective. I recently came across this MIT AgeLab FutureCast featuring exchange research fellow Philipp Osl. His Age Lab bio states “His work at the MIT AgeLab involves original research to identify common service demands and emerging business models to support quality aging.” Sounds like a fellow traveler. The video is validating because his outside perspective confirmed my thinking on many points. Much of what people are doing is down a narrow or incorrect track and too little of it is holiistic.
FutureCast: Philipp Osl on Housing Options for Older Adults
hmmmm….smart guy!
Louis Tenenbaum, one of the nation's leading authorities on aging in place, is the founder of HomesRenewed, a coalition of business, consumers and nonprofits, driving policy and investment to increase the number of age-friendly homes.