Sidewalk Labs is an Alphabet company with a mission to radically improve urban life. We aim to create inclusive, large-scale communities by bringing together an innovative planning approach, products and services designed to address urban challenges, and capital for real estate and advanced infrastructure.
Since our founding in 2015, we’ve grown into an organization of over 100 employees based primarily in New York and Toronto. Our cross-disciplinary team consists of experts from real estate, urban planning, government, finance, technology, and engineering, among other backgrounds.
To date, we’ve incubated and invested in multiple companies focused on solving city problems, and we’ve launched the Sidewalk Toronto project, which aims to create a community along Toronto’s waterfront that achieves new standards of sustainability, affordability, and economic opportunity for all.
With the potential to catalyze and scale new models for inclusive growth, our work is both highly exciting and complex. We are working to achieve something unprecedented — help us build it!
What is the role?
We believe it is possible to set a new standard for cities as places that create and sustain health to improve and extend life for everyone.
Health is not a synonym for health care. We know that health is not a result of our limited interactions with the health care system but rather is created in our daily lives. To improve urban health, we need to rethink the way we create and sustain health every day – in our cities, neighbourhoods and homes. The goal is improved population health and reduced health inequity.
You will report to the Director of Health, located in Sidewalk Labs’ Toronto office. You may work remotely so could be located anywhere, although being located in a time zone close to Toronto or New York will make it easier to work together. If you are located in Toronto, assuming that our offices have reopened, you can also work from the office if you prefer.
You will support our work focused on digitally enabled health and care in the home, with a focus on older adults. As care shifts to home environments, and as individuals are empowered to care for their own health and well-being, the opportunity to integrate technology in the home to improve health continues to grow. This is particularly true for the growing population of older adults living in cities. Your work will focus primarily on understanding the range of technologies available to support older adults to remain independent, to sustain their health and well-being and to be cared for, in their homes, for longer.
What You Will Achieve Over The Summer
You will be responsible for leading one key project. This will be a market landscape research project focused on in home technologies to support older adults
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- Your research will focus on technologies that can be applied both in independent homes and / or in senior housing (e.g. active adult / independent living)
- Your research will focus on technologies that support health promotion and disease prevention, social interaction and physical and mental activity, safety and independence, convenience, self-care and health monitoring, and care delivery
- You may conduct your research through interviews, attending events, desk research, etc.
- You will be responsible for using a tracking tool to document your research and will track both market players and products on the market (or in development)
- You will be responsible for extracting key take-aways from your research and presenting them to the Director of Health and / or Sidewalk Urban Systems leads
- You will be successful if by the end of your internship you have significantly contributed to the organizations knowledge around digital health products and the market more broadly
You will also be asked to support several other related tasks including:
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- Policy environment research
- You will work with the Director of Health in conducting research on the policy environments in several jurisdictions related to incentives and funding available for supportive digital health technologies
- Market sizing efforts
- You will work with the Director of Health and Sidewalk Urban Systems Commercialization team in defining distinct customer segments and in researching market sizing inputs for each of these segments
- User research
- You will work with the Director of Health in preparing for and / or conducting user research (e.g. preparing interview guides, identifying interview targets, taking notes during interviews and synthesizing key-takeaways, etc.)
- Policy environment research
Should we work with an external agency to support user research and prototype development, you may also be asked to support this work (e.g. reviewing and commenting on material, supporting scheduling, supporting design sprints, etc.)
In all, your work will contribute by supporting our efforts to identify new opportunities to improve the quality of life for older adults while also validating sound business investments.
What We Expect
You will be a graduate level student with professional experience in at least one of the following sectors: seniors accommodation (development, investment or operations), digital health / age-tech (product development, roll out, venture capital) , health care (operations or innovation). Your academic experience should compliment your professional experience and should strengthen your ability to understand the digital health landscape and opportunities for product development.
You Will Demonstrate a Range Of Characteristics Including
- Comfort and interest in technology
- You have a strong interest in digital health and age-tech products and love staying up to date on what’s new in the market
- You have experience in developing, launching, or working with new digital health products
- You bring a critical eye and balanced point of view in evaluating the potential role of technology to support health and well-being in the home
- Commercial awareness
- You bring a commercial perspective to your work and understand the market dynamics at play in the digital health landscape
- You have experience with market segmentation, market sizing and market mapping activities
- You understand the need to develop a compelling value proposition for customers
- Project Management
- You are able to organize and document your work in a way that can build institutional knowledge
- You can extract key learnings and share compelling and concise insights with your manager and other internal stakeholders
- You set weekly goals and track against those to document your progress
- Flexibility
- In this role you will own and execute on both exciting and not-so-exciting work. All of it is crucial to deliver on our vision and mission. We expect you to have a roll-up-your-sleeves-and-dive-in attitude all the time. This is a startup, your scope will change and stretch, you’re happy to roll with the punches and adapt as needed.
If interested, please apply here.
