How Innovation is Transforming the Hearing Industry
When I started at Starkey Hearing Technologies 25 years ago, the hearing industry looked very different than it does today.
Dozens of hearing manufacturers across the globe have dwindled to just five, with Starkey being the only one based in the U.S.
Starkey looked different too. Bill Austin’s vision has helped grow this company to more than 6,000 employees in 26+ facilities around the world. That’s astonishing considering, as he told Our American Stories, when he bought this company as a young man, he could barely make ends meet.
I’m often asked how Starkey has been able to not only survive in the hearing industry, but how we’ve been able to thrive. That very question was the center of a recent Bloomberg Businessweek article about Starkey.
While there are many factors that drive our success -- a hardworking team, a strategic business plan, a dedication to customer experience and service -- I kept coming back to one factor in particular: innovation.
For Starkey, innovation has always been a cornerstone. Twenty years ago, Bill was already dreaming of a hearing aid that would help people hear better and live better by focusing on overall health and wellness. Last summer, that vision became a reality with Livio? AI -- the world’s first hearing aid with AI and integrated sensors.
This revolutionary technology is unlike anything else in the industry. It tracks brain and body activity, allowing users to monitor physical, social and cognitive health; it has in-ear translation of 27 languages; and, earlier this year, fall detection and alerts were added. The hearing aid can detect when its user has fallen and automatically alert predetermined emergency contacts.
While I often joke that in a couple years hearing aids will be more like Iron Man’s J.A.R.V.I.S., Starkey isn’t just using technology to boost the greatest machines; we’re using it to change the entire hearing industry. As Starkey’s Chief Technology Officer, Dr. Achin Bhowmik says, this is the hearing aid’s Apple Moment. We’ve taken an already remarkable single-use device and transformed it into a multi-purpose Healthable?. Technology is changing the standard for hearing aids, and, in the process, improving people’s lives.
And we’re not done yet.
When we hear stats like 30,000 older adults die each year from fall-related injuries, when we see growing research linking hearing loss to cognitive decline, that’s motivation enough to continue innovating, to continue pushing ourselves and this industry forward.
When I came to Starkey more than two decades ago, I worked in the company’s All Make Repair and Earmold Lab. My job was to clean old hearing aids that needed repair. I looked at every hearing aid that came across my desk as a way to contribute to Bill’s greater vision. I too was helping people hear again. This is when I first started to think that innovation was the key to this business. Some day, innovation wouldn’t just set Starkey apart, it would change our entire industry and the way people reconnect to the world around them. I’m proud to say -- that day is here.