Next time you look in your bathroom mirror you may not only be seeing your own reflection but the local news, a program that teaches your child to brush his or her teeth, or a commercial. Meet the man that made such an invention possible next on the Forbes.com video network.
Welcome to the Forbes.com video network, I’m Jennifer Lee. We’ve all heard the expression ‘live for today’ but a whole business is focusing on what it’s like to live for tomorrow. Peter Bongers is the CEO of Living Tomorrow and he’s here to tell us a little bit about his latest its latest venture, and first venture here in the United States, isn’t that right?
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Yes, we after two projects in Brussels and in Amsterdam we come to Silicon Valley, San Jose to build our first American project. Now when I was looking at your Web site I was – the whole concept is this fresh new idea.
Can you just kind of explain what Living Tomorrow is.
Well visiting Living Tomorrow is a great experience. You’re confronted with your life in two or three or five or sometimes even 10 years. And there is a guy; he uses a virtual family with a mom, a dad, two kids and a grandpa. And basically explains all these applications and the home and the store and office of the future and the hospital room.
Okay and so some of these – to come up with these products there are some interesting teams that you formed where companies that I myself wouldn’t put together have come together to create a product for the home of the future. What are some of these teams and partnerships like and how do you make that work?
Well a good example is what we did with the intelligent mirror.
My favorite product, personally.
Well we integrated an intelligent mirror in the bathroom and we brought companies together like Phillips and like Unilever for example which is known for its brands like Dove or the Lever soap. It seems like a strange combination but in a way it’s very logic. Phillips is into screens, into interactivity and of course was providing the technology for the intelligent mirror itself as a technological product. Unilever was one of the partners and of course they sell a lot of body and health care products which we use in our bathroom.
So you can literally be brushing your teeth in the mirror and be watching a television show at the same time, right?
Well we even do better. One of the things which is in the intelligent mirror is a cartoon movie where a kid is entertained during teeth brushing and showing exactly how to do it three minutes long, because that’s how long you should brush your teeth. And when the kid does well it gets a pulse, it’s registered and momma can see at the end of the month if it was done 60 times the right way or not. When it doesn’t do well, well there is this kind of crocodile which shows how to do it and the bird does it and when it isn’t done well the crocodile eats the bird.
So how do you personally, though, how do you form a company around just future innovation and products. Who – who – who pays you? How do you make a business out of this whole venture?
Well these companies do. Companies struggle with innovation, we all know that. And innovation is our future. I mean, things can be much cheaper produced in China or in India. Western companies need the power of innovation for their viability. And since many new businesses, businesses for the future, will need cross-disciplinary collaboration between companies. Over the border of their specific domains they really need a platform where they can do that. Where they can translate their ideas very early into practical application and test it on the consumer. What do people really thing about it? Do they really want to have that? And Living Tomorrow is the missing tool in all that process and I think that’s the success of our company.
Well thank you so much for sitting down and telling us a little bit about it today. Good luck with San Jose.
My pleasure, thank you.
Thank you again to Peter Bongers, CEO of Living Tomorrow for joining us.