Next Steps

Our goal in creating Stick With It! is to address issues of teen social behavior in an innovative and socially responsible way. The impact on society would be a group of young people who know how to create boundaries for themselves and possess skills to support good decision-making. From our instincts, our research, and our conversations with teens, parents, and industry leaders, we feel the market is ripe for this type of intervention—we think it could make a real and important difference in the life of teenagers.

If we were to bring Stick With It! to the marketplace, the bulk of the work would be in building the infrastructure, creating a marketing plan, and establishing strategic partnerships. From our research we have learned that the technology used is not expensive and it all exists in some form or other; it just hasn’t yet been paired together in this fashion.

If we were to try and sell Stick With It!, we would use a reseller model of selling our software to mobile phone companies who would bundle the program as a feature in their phones. The two ways we see this occurring is either the customers would pay extra or it would come free with the phone. We believe that if it were a paid feature, parents would want to buy this feature for their children. The supporting services offered on the Stick With It! website would be free.

Lastly, but of crucial importance to the success of a program like Stick With It!, we would partner with already existing organizations for interactive content. For instance Ripple Effects has a very successful, research-based program called Relate to Teens that “helps schools, youth-serving organizations, and businesses change social behavior in ways that improve performance.” We would also approach blogger.com or live journal.com about using their product within our Stick With It website. Another potential alliance could be with Virgin mobile phone company, who recently launched the “Rescue Ring” feature, which is the closest product we’ve seen to Stick With It. We see no need to re-invent the wheel – many other companies have put a lot of research and development time and money into developing effective teen-based content and technology – our strategic partnerships would be key.

The possibilities for extending Stick With It! are endless. Whenever we discuss our idea with friends and family they almost always say that they would love this feature in their phone right now. Strategic partnerships with the likes of cell phone companies, as well as, Weight Watchers, smoking session programs, and Alcoholic Anonymous create the potential for every mobile phone user, teen or adult, to benefit from Stick With It!

Will we do it? We’ll keep you updated…