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92 THE PRACTICE OF INNOVATION

of old technologies: the public-health nurse; placing the latrine below
the well; vaccination; the wire screen outside the window; and, of
very new technologies, antibiotics and pesticides such as DDT. Yet it
was totally unpredictable. And what explains the “baby boom” or the
“baby bust”? What explains the sudden rush of American women
(and of European women as well, though with a lag of a few years)
into the labor force? And what explains the rush into the slums of
Latin-American cities?
Demographic shifts in this century may be inherently unpredictable,
yet they do have long lead times before impact, and lead times, more-
over, which are predictable. It will be five years before newborn babies
become kindergarten pupils and need classrooms, playgrounds, and
teachers. It will be fifteen years before they become important as cus-
tomers, and nineteen to twenty years before they join the labor force as
adults. Populations in Latin America began to grow quite rapidly as
soon as infant mortality began to drop. Still the babies who did not die
did not become schoolchildren for five or six years, nor adolescents
looking for work for fifteen or sixteen years. And it takes at least ten
years—usually fifteen—before any change in educational attainments
translates itself into labor force composition and available skills.
What makes demographics such a rewarding opportunity for the
entrepreneur is precisely its neglect by decision makers, whether
businessmen, public-service staffs, or governmental policymakers.
They still cling to the assumption that demographics do not change—
or do not change fast. Indeed, they reject even the plainest evidence
of demographic changes. Here are some fairly typical examples.
By 1970, it had become crystal clear that the number of children
in America’s schools was going to be 25 to 30 percent lower than it
had been in the 1960s, for ten or fifteen years at least. After all, chil-
dren entering kindergarten in 1970 have to be alive no later than
1965, and the “baby bust” was well established beyond possibility of
rapid reversal by that year. Yet the schools of education in American
universities flatly refused to accept this. They considered it a law of
nature, it seems, that the number of children of school age must go up
year after year. And so they stepped up their efforts to recruit stu-
dents, causing substantial unemployment for graduates a few years
later, severe pressure on teachers’ salaries, and massive closings of
schools of education.
And here are two examples from my own experience. In 1957, I
published a forecast that there would be ten to twelve million college