How do we continue to innovate the death and dying space?

My business partner and I came from Nike where innovation is very specific around athletic performance; creating products to enhance speed, agility, quickness. Innovation has that context for a lot of people, of a widget or gadget or invention. But on this side, it’s more about how can we put people first. To me, that's innovative in the end of life space, where the consumer is the family. 

One thing we learned quickly about the funeral industry is that it is business focused and competitive. That competition has led to the consumer, the family, being a bit out of the picture. They're often not as much of a consideration as they should be. 

Our approach is to hyper focus on on the family because it's a tough time no matter what you're going through and how you enter the moment. Listening to families will help drive innovation, because what they want is what we should be providing.

Open innovation is about democratizing access to thinking differently, from many angles. As the conversation becomes more open, more people feel safe. The conversation about death and dying has often been locked up, just like our ability to talk about these hard moments and the hard parts of our lives. If we can open all of that up, there will be parallel innovation. So as the conversation becomes more open and more people feel safe, more innovation will be expressed.