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Source: Demographics

The unexpected; incongruities; changes in market and industry structure;
and process needs—the sources of innovative opportunity discussed so far
in Chapters 3 through 6—manifest themselves within a business, an indus-
try, or a market. They may actually be symptoms of changes outside, in the
economy, in society, and in knowledge. But they show up internally.
The remaining sources of innovative opportunity:

— Demographics;
— Changes in perception, meaning, and mood;
— New knowledge

are external. They are changes in the social, philosophical, political,
and intellectual environment.

I

Of all external changes, demographics—defined as changes in
population, its size, age structure, composition, employment, educa-
tional status, and income—are the clearest. They are unambiguous.
They have the most predictable consequences.
They also have known and almost certain lead times. Anyone in the
American labor force in the year 2000 is alive by now (though not nec-
essarily living in the United States; a good many of America’s workers
fifteen years hence may now be children in a Mexican pueblo, for
example). All people reaching retirement age in 2030 in the developed
countries are already in the labor force, and in most cases in the occu-
pational group in which they will stay until they retire or die. And the
educational attainment of the people now in their early or mid-twenties
will largely determine their career paths for another forty years.
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