Joseph Schumpeter, a renowned economist from the 1940’s, said “Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism”. He went on to say that Creative Destruction is the consequence of economic and cultural storms that upend the status quo and require business leaders to adapt and evolve quickly to the “new normal.” The storm called the 4th Industrial Revolution is comprised of multiple smaller storms comprised of mobile apps, social media, artificial intelligence, video-on-demand, e-commerce, m-commerce, wearables, and mixed realities.

With the Covid-19 pandemic, the storm has intensified so much so that adaptation now requires moving in hyper-drive. Fitness operators can no longer linger in their adoption of technology; it is literally adapt or perish! In this whitepaper is a chapter authored by ClubIntel’s co-founder Stephen Tharrett that appeared earlier this Fall in Horizon 2030 – The Future of the Health and Fitness Sector, published by Europe Active.  Entitled The 4th Industrial Revolution – An Unprecedented Period of Peril and Promise was written just prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.

In the wake of Covid-19, the relevance of this work is significant and establishes a foundation for why the future of the health and fitness industry lay in its ability to adopt and evolve the nuances of the digital world.

We have witnessed firsthand how important it is for fitness operators to embrace a robust and constantly evolving digital strategy if they wish to prevail, and ultimately thrive over the next year and decade.  As author Sukant Ratnakar exclaimed, “Our future success is directly proportional to our ability to understand, adopt, and integrate new technology into our work.”