Healthcare Technological Development is Our Doom as Entrepreneurs

This article is written by Mohammad Eslim, a Contributor Author at Startup Istanbul.

Dr. Erhan Erkut received a BSc in Industrial Engineering from Bogazici University in 1980 and a Ph.D. University of Alberta School of Business during 1985-2005. He is a member of the Canadian Operational Research Society. Dr. Erkut has established a Center for Excellence in Management and Management.

As human beings we have been acting greedy by the way we are spending fortunes on healthcare research and we continue spending more. China is coming in with three hundred billions and Propagation of Discoveries into Clinical Practice is slowly coming off the pipeline. There is now better health consciousness; no more smoking, no more obesity.

Technology helped improve what was considered impossible and a mere science fiction few years ago. Now, thanks to technology the healthcare sector is able to make us artificial organs instead of lost or amputated ones. We also have telemedicine and crowd medicine; and what is more astounding is the ability to print organs 3D, can you believe that?!

So speaking to the youth of us right now, we will be living to the ripe age of 100, that means most of us will be celebrating our 90 birthday! That leads us to think that we will have a wonderful retirement for 30 or 40 years which sounds great, doesn’t it? Big YES. Is it going to happen? Alas, NO. Probably all of you are wondering why your retirement plan of 30 to 40 years is not going to happen. Well, as our aging is increasing as a population, our birthrate is declining so out population pyramid is turning into a kite. What does that mean?

It basically means that in industrialized nations such as Japan, the balance of our population between the young people and the old people is disrupted. There will be very old people and so young people, which means that every developing country is following the same pattern of having fewer and fewer young people also more and more old people.

What does it mean to entrepreneurs? It means that your retirement schemes unsustainable and unlikely to happen as they are not following up to the change to a kite, in more clear expression it means the retirement age is going to be a moving target that is expected to reach the age of 75. So to sum it all you will live to age 90, work for 50 years until 75, the problem for us, entrepreneurs, is where to work?

There are several hundred entrepreneurs and many more are contemplating an entrepreneurial career who will have to work in a professional company for 50 years, how long can they possibly work in an environment that dictates what you do, when to do it and how to do it?

Entrepreneurs can’t tolerate working on somebody else’s dream while they have to leave the work on theirs unattended. And for those who are accepting this work scheme of working 7 hours a day, 5 days a week with 20 days of vacation and measly pay this is a great career only for robots and avatars and is not meant for human beings.

It’s about time we recapture what rightfully belongs to us, that is why prof. Erhan is right about considering entrepreneurship as a career. It is fine to work in a company for few years but you will get bored, that’s why after those five years you should start your own company and own up to your choice of career as an entrepreneur.

https://vimeo.com/141519448