The Silver Market Phenomenon: Business Opportunities and Responsibilities in the Ageing Society

Chihiro Watanabe graduated from Tokyo University with a bachelor’s degree in engineering (urban planning) in 1968. He received his Ph. D. (arts and science) in 1992, also from Tokyo University. Professor Watanabe joined Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) in 1968 and spent a quarter century there, working chiefly in the fields of industrial policy, industrial technology policy, and energy and environmental policy. He is former Deputy Director-General of Technology Development. Professor Watanabe is currently a professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management at Tokyo Institute of Technology, and former member of the Institute’s council. He is also Senior Advisor to the Director of Technology at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), and serves the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) in the capacity of Senior Advisor to the Chairman on Technology. He is also associated with United Nations University (UNU) as a visiting professor. In 2004, he was appointed the leader of Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sport, Science and Technology’s (MEXT) 21st Century Center of Excellence (COE) Project: Science of Institutional Management of Technology (SIMOT), and is Director of the Research Center for the SIMOT. His research fields are techno-economics, technology innovation, technology policy, and institutional innovation. Professor Watanabe has published 120 refereed papers in these fields, including “Institutional MOT: Co-evolutionary Dynamism of Innovation and Institution” (in M. Horlesberger, M. El-Nawawi and T. Khalil, eds., Challenges in the Management of New Technologies [World Scientific Publishing, New Jersey, 2007]); “Institutional Elasticity as a Significant Driver of IT Functionality Development” (Technological Forecasting and Social Change 71, No. 7, 2004); and “Systems Option for Sustainable Development” (Research Policy 28, No. 7, 1999).

Walker’s presentation will cover many topics related to the 50+ audience in Australia. She will present ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) data on the population profile with particular emphasis on demographic trends and the breakdown among specific age groups. In addition to the population data, Walker will present facts about wealth and predictions on the discretionary spending power of each generation by 10 year age bracket, including spending by category, such as travel and key goods and services. Part of Walker’s presentation will be the key findings from her Masters of Advertising thesis from RMIT University, titled “Ageism in Australian Advertising”. This discussion will include practical advice on how to communicate more effectively and have your message resonate with the audience. Consideration will be given to imagery, tone of voice, use of humor and media selection. Walker will also share highlights from the recently completed Evergreen Report, a qualitative study on the attitudes of Australian women (aged 50+) to advertising. The report revealed that their priorities in life were health, wellbeing, financial independence and the importance of intergenerational relationships. Lastly Walker will present examples of advertising, including case studies on what has worked and what has not. Her presentation is a blend of academic findings, along with day-to-day practical advice for marketers and advertisers.

Gill Walker is CEO of Evergreen Marketing Communications, the first advertising agency in Australia and New Zealand dedicated to a greater understanding of the 50+ audience. Evergreen builds campaigns that motivate and resonate with boomers and seniors. Evergreen has many blue chip clients including State Trustees, Prime Trust, Sentinel, Sancella, Kimberley Clark, Buxton Developments and Southern Cross Broadcasting. In 2003 Walker completed a Masters thesis on Ageism in Australian Advertising at RMIT University in Melbourne, which included reviewing over 3500 advertisements and holding numerous focus groups. She is a regular lecturer for the Masters of Advertising program at RMIT. Before founding Evergreen in 2003 Walker was Managing Director for Sudler & Hennessey Australia, part of the WPP Group of companies, and also worked internationally with McCann Erickson. She has extensive experience across many brand portfolios, including healthcare, travel, finance and retirement lifestyle services. Walker is a regular commentator on issues regarding advertising and marketing to boomers and seniors. She has appeared on television; contributed articles to newspapers and trade publications; and has been invited to give keynote speeches at industry functions.

Japan has the most rapidly aging society on the globe – and also has the highest percentage of elderly people in the world, with 22% of the population over 65. The AARP (a US organization), as well as a number of other businesses and associations, are all looking to Japan. Why? How Japan deals with her aging society will likely become a model for other countries. Changes in the social system, including reform of the pension scheme, are one issue that is attracting attention from overseas. Similarly, the revision of the Employment Security of Older Persons Act, as well as the Nursing Care Insurance System, are also of interest. In Japan, many have pointed out the various problems at hand, but until now only Japan has made such provisions. It is only natural that many countries who will soon have aging societies will focus on these policies. Second, Japanese products and services for the elderly have drawn attention from around the world. There are many examples, from software for keeping the brain fit to cellular phones for the elderly, direct-sales living assistance magazines, travel planning for the elderly, nursing care robots, toilets with automatic flushing capability for the disabled, “Silver Resource Centers” that employ the elderly, and other businesses designed with the participation of the elderly in mind. All these initiatives are becoming models for many other countries, and could become a new form of international contribution for Japan. The important thing is to not limit ourselves to armchair theorizing, but to continue creating products and businesses.

Hiroyuki Murata is a well-known expert on the 50+ market and an opinion leader on aging issues in Japan. Among his noteworthy accomplishments, Murata introduced Curves, the world’s largest fitness chain for women, to Japan and helped make it a successful business. He is also responsible for bringing the first college-linked retirement community to Japan, to be opened in Kobe in July, 2008. Murata is the author of several books, including The Business of Aging: 10 Successful Strategies for a Diverse Market, and Seven Paradigm Shifts in Thinking about the Business of Aging. They have been described as “must read books” by more than 30 leading publications including Nikkei, Nikkei Business, Yomiuri, and Japan Industry News. His most recent book, Retirement Moratorium: What Will the Not-Retired Boomers Change? was published in August 2007 by Nikkei Publishing. Murata serves as President of The Social Development Research Center, Tokyo, a think-tank overseen by METI (Ministry of Economy, Technology, and Industry), and acts as board member and advisor to various Japanese private companies. He is also Professor of Global Strategies at Tohoku University and a Visiting Professor at Kansai University. Murata serves as a member of the advisory boards to The World Demographic Association (Switzerland) and ThirdAge, Inc. (U.S.). Murata is a frequent contributor to Japanese business journals on the topic of marketing and business strategy for the 50+ market. He is also a frequent commentator for many leading newspapers, magazines and broadcast media, including Nikkei, Yomiuri, Asahi, Mainichi, Japan Industry News, Newsweek Japan, International Herald Tribune, New York Times, Dow Jones, Silver Industry News, TV Tokyo and NHK. Murata holds a Master’s degree in Engineering from Tohoku University Graduate School of Engineering, and a MBA from Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees (French National Grand Ecole) in Paris. Murata speaks fluent English, French, and Japanese.

Kenneth Alan Grossberg received his Ph.D. at Princeton University in Politics & East Asian Studies in 1977. Elected a Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows, Harvard University (1974), Prof. Grossberg was a published authority on Japanese history before he became a specialist in international marketing and Asian political economy. He has worked in investment banking and strategic consulting in addition to the academic world. Prof. Grossberg started his academic career at Harvard, but in 1980 he turned to the private sector. Fluent in Japanese and Chinese, he was the first investment banker at Prudential-Bache Securities to work on mergers and acquisitions in the Asian market. He left investment banking to establish the strategic consulting firm Orient-West Consultants, Inc. and in 1985 Citibank recruited him to be Vice President and Chief of Strategy for their Consumer Services Group / International in the Asia Pacific region. As chief of strategy he was responsible for managing Citibank’s strategic planning process in ten Asian countries and for creating and directing the bank’s successful consumer banking strategy in Japan. In the late 1980s he returned to the academic world when Yeshiva University invited him to develop the marketing program for their new Syms School of Business. In 1992 Dr. Grossberg was awarded a Fulbright Visiting Research Professorship to Tel Aviv University where over the next decade he developed and managed high-tech, client-oriented and client-financed consulting joint ventures with MBA programs in Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard, the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, the Technion, Nanyang Technological University, Columbia Business School’s Fundamentals of Management Asia program, and Hebrew University. In 2001 he became the first and only non-Japanese professor to be granted tenure at the International Management (MBA) program of Waseda University in Tokyo, and in 2002 he founded the Waseda Marketing Forum.

In Singapore, the conventional wisdom is that people will need more medical and health care as they grow older. R&D for the Silver Market has thus been focused on treatment of illness associated with old age, biomedical engineering for handicapped patients who are senior in age, etc. Recently, however, there is a new awareness that the number of healthy senior people is also on the rise, in terms of absolute numbers. They are better educated, and wealthier, than their counterparts from 10 to 20 years ago. They thus form a new and growing group of middle-class people who could become customers of new, innovative products/services developed specifically for them. This large pool of growing senior citizens has one important characteristic. They demand value for money since they are well educated, and wish to continue having a good lifestyle; yet, they need to stretch the limited cash provided by their retirement fund. For instance, they would like to have PCs in order to remain in contact with their peers, to search for information, to play simple games, etc.; yet normal PCs are too costly and include many features not useful to senior citizens.

Hang Chang Chieh received his Ph.D degree in Control Engineering from the University of Warwick, England, in 1973. From 1974 to 1977, he worked as a Computer and Systems Technologist at Shell Eastern Petroleum Company (Singapore) and Shell International Petroleum Company (The Netherlands). Since 1977, he has been with the National University of Singapore, serving in various positions including Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Head of the Department of Electrical Engineering. From 1994 to 2000, he served as the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University in charge of research. From 2001 to 2003, he was nominated to the Agency for Science, Technology and Research to serve as its Executive Deputy Chairman. Since 2004, he has resumed his academic career at the National University of Singapore. His current appointments include Chairman of Management Board, Interactive & Digital Media Institute of NUS, and Head of Division of Engineering and Technology Management, Faculty of Engineering. Dr. Hang received the 2000 National Science & Technology Medal for his leadership and contributions to science and technology development in Singapore. He was elected a Fellow of IEEE in 1998 and a Foreign Member of the Royal Academy of Engineering, UK in 2000. He has served as the founding Chairman of the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) since 2001. Currently, he also serves as non-executive Chairman of two high-tech companies and as board member of another five public and private companies.

This presentation explores the increasing importance of “grey power”. To fully understand grey market potential, companies need to develop an understanding of individual older customers and their broader social contexts, namely in terms of varying immediate household compositions, and the nature of intergenerational relationships. In this presentation we extend the debates about older people and business strategy in three ways. First, we provide a basis for understanding older workers as older customers by employing a wealth/health segmentation matrix. Secondly, we extend consideration of grey market potential beyond thinking of older workers and customers in isolation by suggesting that older customers, in particular, should be considered within the context of their household setting and its wider needs. Finally, we signal how firms who are planning long term “silver strategies” need to be wary of merely jumping on the “grey gold-rush” bandwagon without first taking into account intergenerational dynamics. By challenging assumptions about older household compositions in the 21st Century, we provide an explanation of older workers as customers in a variety of social contexts in order to help organisations continue capitalizing on grey power into the future.

Sue Tempest is an Associate Professor of Strategic Management at Nottingham University Business School, The University of Nottingham, UK and Co-Director of Nottingham University Business School’s Executive MBA Programme. She received her MBA and a PhD in strategic management and organizational learning in the television industry from the University of Nottingham. Her research interests include: organizational learning and management education; strategy and new forms of organization and resultant career issues; the impact of demographic ageing on strategic management; and strategy and entrepreneurship. She has published in journals such as Organization Science, Human Relations, Organization Studies, Journal of Management Studies, Long Range Planning, Management Learning and European Management Review. She has a range of publications considering the role of liminal workers in organizational learning and strategy, including the following coauthored articles: “Grey Advantage: New Strategies for the Old” (Long Range Planning Vol. 35, No. 5, 2002) and “Careering Alone: Careers and social capital in the financial services and television industries“ (Human Relations Vol. 57, No. 12, 2004).

The Baby Boom generation represents the last gasp for mass media in the United States. Boomers – the largest generation in American history – grew up with television, newspapers and magazines, and they are the largest constituency of traditional media. But the generations following the Boomers are far less loyal, spreading their time across a wide array of new digital information choices. The pain of audience erosion has been felt most sharply in the newspaper industry, which has had the greatest difficulty in attracting younger readers. Surprisingly, even older audiences – Boomers and seniors – have begun to shift their attention away from printed newspapers towards new media choices. That erosion – along with advertiser perception that older consumers are less desirable marketing targets – threatens the economic foundation of the U.S. newspaper publishing industry. Although fragmentation poses a threat to all traditional media, the threat to newspapers is especially alarming. The large editorial budgets and staffs of newspapers have historically been the most important source of unbiased fact gathering and represent the foundation of news information flow in the U.S. As newspapers fall victim to fragmentation and ebbing revenue streams, it’s not yet clear what new form of robust newsgathering organizations will take their place.

Mark Miller is a seasoned journalist and a leader in serving the information needs of 50-plus and Baby Boomer readers. He writes the weekly column “Retire Smart,” which focuses on topics related to aging and retirement and appears in more than 30 newspapers around the U.S. Mr. Miller is the editor and publisher of www.RetirementRevised.com, a website that features his newspaper column along with other news articles and video interviews of interest to 50-plus audiences. Mr. Miller was the founding editor of Satisfaction, a groundbreaking lifestyle magazine and companion Web site addressing the concerns and interests of the Baby Boomer generation, and has written extensively on Boomer business, marketing and economic trends for newspapers, magazines and web sites. He is the former editor of the respected weekly business newspaper Crain’s Chicago Business, and was also the Sunday editor of the Chicago Sun-Times. Additionally, Mr. Miller has worked extensively in broadcasting, covering business, personal finance and consumer affairs for Chicago-based television and radio outlets. Mr. Miller is also president of 50+Digital LLC, a multimedia publishing and consulting company dedicated to serving the information needs of the Baby Boom generation. The company develops, launches, and operates advertising-supported media properties for interactive and print media. 50+Digital also provides consulting services to other media organizations focused on the Boomer market. Finally, the company works with a broad range of non-profit groups on interactive strategy. 50+Digital publishes a blog focused on 50-plus business trends at www.50plusdigital.com/blog. Mr. Miller is an experienced public speaker, and has spoken recently at the Positive Aging Conference, the Silicon Valley Boomer Venture Summit, and the What’s Next Boomer Business Summit. Mr. Miller graduated from Grinnell College with a B.A. in English literature.

More than 30 million German customers with a monthly buying power of 9 billion Euros are increasingly being targeted by German marketers. However, a large number of “seniorized” ads and products have failed in attracting these older consumers. How can companies attract mature consumers? What are the key factors for success? Is there a market for “senior products” in Germany? Based on best practices, this presentation explains the needs and demands of senior customers for a support economy and describes simple ways to engage successfully with the aging market.

Frank Leyhausen received his degree in insurance business, marketing and direct marketing. He joined MedCom International in 2001 after working in the marketing of financial industries for more than 10 years. During his time with Ineas BV (Amsterdam), Deutsche Bank insurance group (Bonn) and Gerling insurance company (Cologne) he was already involved in leading age related projects. At MedCom he set up a “demographic consulting” business unit where he and his team are focused on communication and product development in all age related issues as well as in workforce management. He became general manager in 2005 and partner in 2006. MedCom International creates various campaigns and initiatives, always based on prior research data culled by company-owned senior panels. These panels aim to empower elderly people, allowing them to employ new product developments and services as well as to comprehend changing issues in health, social insurance and other relevant matters. Further, MedCom International has joined forces with NGOs and other enterprises to inform and educate seniors in their decision making processes.

Cornelius Herstatt is Managing Director and full professor with the Institute for Technology and Innovation Management (TIM) at the Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH). He is also a founding partner of the European Institute for Technology and Innovation Management (EITIM). He has published various books and over 130 papers on innovation and technology management. His main research areas are: Front End of Innovation, management of innovation projects, lead user management, open innovation and Innovation Off shoring. He is involved in research projects in Japan, India and the USA besides his work in Germany. Cornelius Herstatt is member of the German Association for Professors of Business Administration, member of various editorial boards and Area Manager of the International Journal for Innovation and Technology Management. He is an alumni/fellow of JSPS (Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science), World Demographic Association (WDA), East West Centre (Hawaii) and Templeton College (Oxford/UK).

The executive functions housed in the prefrontal and dorsolateral areas of the brain form the core of the higher cognitive functions: planning, organization, abstraction, overall judgment. They issue directives that allow the various areas of the brain to operate collaboratively. If we introduce training methods into our daily lifes to enhance these executive functions, we may offer the hypothesis that their improvement will also enhance the higher cognitive functions. Through our cooperative research with industry, we have found evidence that if we adopt daily habits that consciously use the brain (i.e. those prefrontal and dorsolateral areas), then it is possible to rejuvenate the brain itself. For example, using neurological knowledge and technology, we have proposed a training system of systematized reading, writing and arithmetic, which has shown that it is possible to mitigate the effects of dementia and even improve the quality of life of mentally healthy elderly persons. In further surveys, we hope to deliver direct proof of its efficacy in preventing dementia.

Ryuta Kawashima is a professor at the Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer, Tohoku University. Dr. Kawashima graduated from the medical program at Tohoku University in 1985, and also completed his medical degree at the graduate school there in 1989. He has been a visiting researcher at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, assistant and lecturer at the Tohoku University Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer, professor at the The New Industry Creation Hatchery Center (NICHe), and began his current position in 2006. He has been Distinguished Professor at Tohoku since 2008. His specialty is neurology, and he studies brain dynamics through the regeneration cycle of the cranial nerve cells in small animals. He also does research on brain function imaging that visualizes the movement of the human heart. In order to apply these research results to the fields of education and welfare, he carries out collaborative, interdisciplinary research with a wide range of fields: medicine, physical science, life science, engineering, pharmaceutics, linguistics, pedagogy, and the fine arts. He is an expert adviser on the Council for Gender Equality, and was a member of the former National Language Subcommittee of the Cultural Commission. Major awards include the 34th annual prize of the Japanese Society of Nuclear Medicine (1996); the 2006 award for remarkable contributions to technology from The National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (NISTEP); and public recognition from the Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications during the 2008 Council for Info-Communications Promotion Month. He has over 130 peer-reviewed scholarly articles, and has published over 100 books, including Cultivate your Brain (Kumon Publishing); Higher Function Brain Imaging (Igaku sho’in); and Drills for Training the Adult Brain (Kumon Publishing).

Japan’s changing demographics present great challenges as well as opportunities for financial service providers. With the aging of Japanese society and the deterioration of social security systems, customer needs are undergoing fundamental changes. The key for success is the capability to offer clients a wide range of product solutions for the customers’ specific needs. At the centre of these needs are proper de-cumulation of wealth for the elderly generation and accumulation of wealth for the younger generation. In order to cater to Japanese customers’ long-term retirement needs, financial service providers need to develop solutions for a constant pension income stream, secure but opportunity-related wealth management, tax-optimized inheritance concepts, as well as health care and nursing solutions for the elderly generation. At the same time, flexible “life cycle” solutions are needed for the younger generations, who are faced with the future “double burden” of higher education costs for their children and preparing for retirement in an environment of shrinking public pensions. Allianz entered the Japanese life insurance market – which is the world’s third largest – in 2008. Founded in 1890, the Allianz Group is one of the leading global financial service providers in insurance, banking and asset management, serving more than 80 million customers in about 70 countries.

Uwe Michel is Representative Director and Chairman of Allianz Life Insurance Japan Ltd. He studied law in Germany and Switzerland and received his law degree in Germany. He also holds a Master of Law from the National University of Ireland in Dublin, and completed an Advanced Management Programme at INSEAD, in Fontainebleau, France. He joined Allianz AG’s Legal Department in 1994 after starting his career as an attorney with Linklaters, London. As Senior Executive Vice President of Allianz SE (formerly Allianz AG), he assumed managerial positions within the Allianz Group, both at the headquarters in Munich and at various group entities abroad. Among others, he served as the Head of M&A in the Asian Regional Head Office in Singapore and as CEO of Allianz Indonesia. Furthermore, he was based in India to establish joint ventures with the Bajaj Group in both the life insurance and non-life businesses. Recently, as Head of the Allianz Group Internal Consultant Department (Allianz Group OPEX), Munich, Michel established standards for achieving operational excellence in the financial service sector following the Six Sigma methodology. Since 2006 he has been managing Allianz’s entry into the Japanese life insurance market. Allianz Life Insurance Japan Ltd. opened for business on April 1, 2008. In his current position, Uwe Michel is based in Tokyo and acts as Representative Director and Chairman of Allianz Life Insurance Japan Ltd.

Prof. em. Hugo Tschirky, PhD, DBA, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Department of Management, Technology, and Economics

• ETH-Masters-Degree in Mechanical Engineering with majors in Process Engineering, Automatic Control, and Nuclear Engineering (1964).
  
• ETH-Doctorate in Nuclear Engineering (1968).
  
• ETH-Doctorate in Business Administration (1978).
  
• ETH-medals for master thesis and doctorate.

• Research on safety of nuclear power stations and fast breeder reactors (1968-71, San Diego, USA)
  
• CEO of Carl Zeiss Zurich AG (1971-1976, optics & electronics)
  
• CEO of Cerberus AG (1976-1982, leading security company, 3000 employees)
  
• Full Professor of Business Administration at ETH Zürich (1982-2006, focus on strategic management, technology & innovation management, management of innovation- & knowledge-intensive companies)
  
• Sabbatical at Tokyo Institute of Technology (1992)
  
• Sabbatical at Sloan School of Management (MIT, 2000)
  
• various Board of Director’s memberships (Canon Switzerland, Dräger, LogObject, B’Results, etc)

Book Publications:

• Technology & Innovation Management on the Move (2003)
  
• Structured Creativity (2006)
  
• Sustained Innovation Management (2007)
  

Japan is aging at a rapid pace seen nowhere else in the world. The proportion of elderly people among Japan’s population is undoubtedly on the rise. As the elderly get older, their bodily functions begin to deteriorate and they begin to experience difficulties in everyday life. But are the products and the environment surrounding this rapidly changing population transforming accordingly? Manufacturing in an aging society should supply products and environments appropriate to a population with a swelling proportion of elderly people. There has been good progress in creating “barrier free” environments that remove existing obstacles to handicapped and elderly people. But while these initiatives are reasonable as transitional measures, it would be difficult to say that they make sense from a social cost perspective. There have been proposals for “universal design” (UD), which does not compensate retroactively, but rather seeks to manufacture goods and environments in a way that takes into account, from the very beginning, the needs of a wide range of users. In order to achieve a unified society with a superaged population, it seems necessary to encourage manufacturers to adopt universal design.

Masayoshi Watanabe is Director of the Monozukuri Policy Planning Office within the Manufacturing and Industry Division of the Ministry of Economy, Trade & Industry. He is also specially appointed professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and visiting professor at Iwate University and Tokyo Denki University. He received his Ph.D. in engineering from Tohoku University. He entered the Ministry (then called MITI) in 1990 and served as the head of the general affairs section at the Tohoku Bureau of Economy, Trade and Industry. From 2005 to 2007, he was a planning official at the Research and Development Division, Industrial Science and Technology Policy and Environment Bureau responsible for supervising the Ministry’s strategic research plan, which is called the “Technology Strategy Map.” He assumed his current position in 2007, where he oversees planning and proposals for Japan’s Monozukuri (high-quality manufacturing industries) policy. His specialties and research interests include research development management, technology roadmaps, human engineering, universal design, etc. His major publications include the coauthored Design, Introduction and Enactment of Technology Roadmaps, and Implementing Research and Development Strategy (Gijutsu joho kyokai, 2008); and A Discussion Manual for the Practical Application of Technology Roadmapping Methodology to Promote Multidisciplinary Cooperation of Technology?, Version 1.0, C-Plan (Convergence Plan) (Materials for the Research and Development Subcommittee of METI’s Industrial Structure Council).

One of these three categories is the market for older people themselves. This market is well studied by the concept of “universal design.” The two other categories are those markets induced by the silver population: the first is that created by responding to the demands of those who are taking care of the elderly. We need to know how the elderly are being taken care of and what kinds of technologies can assist. The third category is the market created by grandparents who want to entertain grandchildren in their homes. One example of this form of consumption is the rapid diffusion of flat panel televisions among the elderly?

Fumio Kodama is Professor at the Graduate School of Engineering Management (MOT Program) and Director of the MOT Research Center at Shibaura Institute of Technology in Tokyo. He is also Professor Emeritus of The University of Tokyo. From 1994 to 2003, he was Professor at the University of Tokyo (Research Center of Advanced Science and Technology, Graduate School of Engineering, and Director of the Research Center of Advanced Economic Engineering). Previously, he taught at the Graduate School of Policy Science of Saitama University (now National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies) from 1984 to 1993. In addition to teaching, he worked as Director-in-Research at the National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (NISTEP) of the Science and Technology Agency from 1988 to 1991. He was also Adjunct Professor at the National Center for Science and Information Systems (NACSIS) from 1995 to 1999. He was Visiting Professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 1991-1992, teaching in the Program on Science, Technology, and Public Policy. In 1992-1993, he was Visiting Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University, teaching in the VTSS (Program in Values, Technology, Science, and Society) Program. Kodama is a graduate of the University of Tokyo, where he received a B.S. and M.S. in mechanical engineering (in 1964, 1967), and earned his Ph.D. in Engineering in 1974. Dr. Kodama is a member of the Engineering Academy of Japan; an editor for the journal Research Policy; president of The Japan Society of MOT; and president of The Japan Society for Science Policy and Research Management. He is the author of many articles on technology policy and management. One of his works is “Analyzing Japanese High Technology: the Techno-Paradigm shift”, (Pinter Publishers, London, 1991), the Japanese version of which received the 1991 Sakuzo Yoshino Prize. He is also a recipient of the 1991 Science and Technology Minister’s Award for Research Excellence. Other publications include “Technology Fusion and the New R&D” (Harvard Business Review, 1992), Emerging Patterns of Innovation: Sources of Japan’s Technological Edge (Harvard Business School Press, 1995), and Industrializing Knowledge: University-Industry Linkages in Japan and the United States (Branscomb L., Kodama F. and Florida R. (eds.): The MIT Press, 1999).

Merril Silverstein, Ph.D. is Professor of Gerontology and Sociology at the University of Southern California. He received his doctorate in sociology from Columbia University, after which he was a post-doctoral scholar (NIA trainee) at USC and then research assistant professor in population studies at Brown University. He joined the faculty of the USC Davis School of Gerontology in 1993, was promoted to associate professor in 1999, and in 2002 split his appointment with the USC Department of Sociology upon becoming full professor. Dr. Silverstein’s research focuses on aging within the context of family life, including such topics as intergenerational transfers and transmission, social support over the life-course, grandparent-grandchild relations, migration in later life, public policy toward caregiving families, aging anxiety, and international perspectives on aging families. He has authored over 100 published works, including two edited volumes: Intergenerational Relations Across Time and Place (Springer Publishing) and From Generation to Generation: Continuity and Discontinuity in Aging Families (Johns Hopkins University Press). Dr. Silverstein is currently principal investigator of the Longitudinal Study of Generations, a project that has tracked multigenerational families over four decades to study how family relationships have changed across biographical, historical, and generational time. He also has active projects in China, Sweden, and Israel on the topic of intergenerational relations. His research has been supported by grants from the NIA, NICHD, NSF, Fogarty International Center, Binational Foundation, and AARP. Dr. Silverstein is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America, the Brookdale National Fellowship Program, and the Fulbright International Senior Scholars Program.

Governments are largely responsible for the general shape of the silver market: only a small number of “silver people” are financially completely independent. The large majority depend on a pension that is granted or at least supervised by a government. The silver market itself is in many segments controlled or supervised by the government. This does not concern only the safety of products. Governments are, or often direct, providers of products and services of the silver market. Other products are restricted by official price control. The Japanese government is focusing on cost efficiency in particular for those products that must be financed by public insurance: health insurance and long term care insurance. This limits the quality. On the other hand, silver products and services offered outside direct government focus are offered in a variety larger than in most other countries in the world. Nevertheless, the major of the silver market has connections with government. As a result, foreign companies in particular may have to make difficult decisions: Should a producer of high-quality wheelchairs sell its products on the free market for a price comparable to those in other countries? The quantity of sold chairs would be small, and only rich people could enjoy the advantage of a better quality of life. Should this company sell their products at the lower prices required by the Japanese government, thus accepting a much lower profit margin (as for example in Germany)? On the other hand, is the Japanese government right to guarantee a lower price for health and long-term care insurance? Who will pay the premiums? Neither political economics nor business administration can formulate a final answer. Each society, each company has to find its own balance between responsibility and business opportunity, again and again, interdependently.

Dr. Martin Pohl, Degree in Business Administration of the University of Mannheim, since 2006 German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, German Embassy in Tokyo, Counsellor, Expert for Labour and Health Affairs, before: 1996-99 Consultant with Deutsche Eisenbahn-Consulting GmbH, a Company of Deutsche Bahn AG and Deutsche Bank AG, 1999-2005 Expert for Business Management with the German National Trade Union for Building, Agriculture and the Environment, and 2003-2006 member of the Supervisory-Board of Lafarge-Roofing GmbH (12.100 employees). He is the author of Sponsorship of Literature by Private Enterprise in Germany and England (Mannheim 1996, www.uni-mannheim.de/mateo/verlag/diss/mpohl/mpohl.html) and Management Consulting (in Prof. Dr. Kost, Klaus (Ed.): Wir retten, was zu retten ist, Marburg 2004, S. 103-119).

Learning about business opportunities in aging societies around the world requires an understanding of end customers’ everyday lives. Especially when there are several cultural differences involved, it is not enough to rely on market studies based on statistics and other secondary data. Instead, a hands-on-approach is necessary to discover what potential customers actually need. Constructing “Living Labs” facilitates the monitoring of customer wishes and needs. The Sendai-Finland Wellbeing Center is an example of a Living Lab facility that provides frequent information on the needs of Japanese eldercare users and providers. Operating this kind of eldercare facility in Japan provides invaluable information about the Japanese market in wellbeing and healthcare. New technologies can be tested in the unit; customers and staff also offer important resources for research on the cultural differences in values attached to eldercare. This provides insight into the future needs and changes of an aging society. Knowing the future customer and being able to predict her needs gives a competitive advantage!

Dr. Merja Karppinen became the Head of the R&D Unit at the Sendai-Finland Wellbeing Center in Sendai, Japan in June 2007. She is representing the Finnish government and Finpro in this unique cooperation between Finland and Japan. Dr. Karppinen has a DSc (Econ) in International Business from the Helsinki School of Economics (HSE). Her specialization is cultural patterns of knowledge creation in international business. Prior to her assignment in Sendai, she worked as a Professor of International Business at the University of Vaasa, Finland. She has had a long academic career at HSE and has also been a visiting lecturer at several universities in Finland, Latvia, Japan and Australia. She is currently also a visiting researcher at HSE. Dr. Karppinen has been involved with Japanese society since 1982 when she first came to Japan as an exchange student and studied at ICU and Hokkaido University. Later she worked in a Japanese company and taught at a Japanese university. She is actively involved in discussion about Japan’s changing society in Japan; her latest publication on the topic is “Tohoku as Seen through the Eyes of a Finn: Working Women in Finland and Tohoku area” (Tohoku 21, June 2008).

At first glance, the silver market provides a highly lucrative opportunity for businesses willing and able to meet the needs of Japan’s senior generation. International and domestic players have been pursuing the new opportunities in the last few years. Thoroughly understanding the needs of the silver generation is important to capitalizing on this market. However, this is just one side of the value coin. Need is not the same as demand, and demand is not the same as profitable business. To turn a profit, you have to balance value delivery and value extraction. Value delivery is relatively easy: it requires market research, appropriate products and services, and an effective distribution system. Value extraction is difficult: you need to set and implement the right prices across products, regions and channels. A business strategy based solely on demographic and socioeconomic data, customer needs and buying power is simplistic, misleading and in some cases dangerous. Capitalizing on the silver market requires a systematic approach to developing and profitably selling products and services tailored to the older generation. It takes a solid understanding of customer requirements, value-to-customer, ability and willingness to pay, price elasticities, and revenue and profit functions. The best way to achieve this is by means of a professional pricing process that covers and connects pricing strategy, price setting and price implementation.

Stefan Lippert is the managing partner of Simon-Kucher & Partners, Japan. Simon-Kucher is a partner-owned strategy & marketing consulting firm with a clear focus on revenue-driven profit growth. Simon-Kucher currently employs 450 consultants in 17 offices worldwide. Before joining Simon-Kucher, Stefan worked with McKinsey & Company. Stefan studied economics, history, philosophy and law in Germany and Austria. After receiving his PhD from the University of Kiel in 1995, he held academic positions at the Waseda School of Commerce in Tokyo and the Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Stefan frequently gives speeches and seminars on international strategy and marketing at leading academic institutions.

Christiane Hipp became Vice Dean of the faculty in 2007 and full professor of Organisation, Human Resource Management and General Management at the Brandenburg University of Technology in 2005. She received her diploma in industrial engineering in 1994 and her Ph.D. in economics in 1999. From 1995 until 1999 Hipp was research associate at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research and from 1999 to 2005 she worked as a senior technology manager for several companies (e.g., Vodafone) while she continued her research at the Hamburg University of Technology in the area of innovation management. There she received her “Habilitation” in 2006. She was a visiting scholar at the University of Manchester’s Centre for Research on Innovation and Competition. Her areas of interest include service innovation, innovation strategies, intellectual property and innovation processes. She has published several articles in these areas, including “Service peculiarities and the specific role of technology in service innovation management” (International Journal of Services and Technology Management Vol. 9, No. 2, 2008) and “Innovation in the Service Sector: The demand of service-specific innovation measurement concepts” (Research Policy Vol. 34, No. 4, 2005).

The products that we surround ourselves with can have a significant impact upon our daily lives. While good design can remain unnoticed, poor design can literally strip us of dignity. In rapidly aging societies, users of products sold on the Silver Market are expecting more than functional satisfaction. They also expect supra-functionality, which includes social, cultural, aspirational, tribal and emotional needs, and cannot always be understood by applying traditional scientific research approaches. This presentation will focus on the importance of our material landscape (our product filled environments), the Silver Market trends in product consumption and bonding, and innovative ways in which designers are integrating the user experience with the designing process to ensure more appropriate and satisfying design outcomes.

Deana McDonagh is an Associate Professor of Industrial Design at the School of Art + Design and the Beckman Institute of Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), USA. Prior to her faculty position in America, she was a Reader in Industrial Design: User-Centred Design in the Department of Design and Technology at Loughborough University, UK. She is a Fellow of the World Demographic Association and the Design Research Society. Her research focuses on how products can empower and enable individuals to live more enriched lives through empathic design research approaches. Recently she has focused on integrating non-designers into the designing process, so that marginalized voices can be heard (e.g. aging citizens, individuals with physical disabilities).

Consumer participation is generally not a favourite topic of companies dealing with products and services. Especially the elderly consumer is often excluded from the process of product development and product design. This presentation will discuss a modern concept of consumer participation that explicitly incorporates elderly consumers, and will underline the importance of product likeability and usability in an aging society. The core concept is a representative panel of 2500 persons aged 50 and above. Members of the panel will test a variety of products frequently needed by elderly persons in everyday use. Tests are followed by standardized questionnaires and interviews to collect information about attitudes and experiences concerning the products and services in question. Results would be fruitful both for consumer-based quality certification and demography-oriented improvement of products and services. Moreover, the continuous embedding of elderly consumers may help promote products and services, which could open the market for more and better products needed by members of an ageing society.

Uwe Kleinemas is currently Director of the Centre for the Cultures of Ageing ZAK, founded in 2002, at the University of Bonn. He is a psychologist by profession and received his PhD in 1994. He also works as Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University of Bonn in the field of diagnostics, evaluation and research methodology. In his position as director of the ZAK, he coordinates interdisciplinary research on the conditions of “successful ageing” in its broadest sense. The topics of recent research projects range from risk profiles of elderly drivers to the ethical implications of life span extension. Additionally, in order to help answer recent questions in applied science, he deals with the transfer of gerontological knowledge into the economy and society. Demographic change and its implications for the elderly as an economic target group is one of his main interests.

A main challenge of new product development (NPD) is matching a new design with customer preferences. The advent of the silver market and the new market requirements resulting form this phenomenon are adding to the existing challenges of growing heterogeneity of demand, exploding product complexities, and the rise of the creative consumer. My talk will explore new strategies to make NPD more efficient in this difficult situation. One of the most important external sources for innovation is the user of a product or service. Many inventions originate not with the manufacturer, but with the user or customer. The idea is that by incorporating a much larger variety of ideas and knowledge into NPD, performance should improve and the resulting products should fit better with market requirements. The talk will discuss a diverse set of strategies for developing products and services for the silver market that companies can employ to profit from open innovation methods, specifically by including senior citizens in the process of defining new offerings.

Frank Piller is a Professor of Management at the Technology & Innovation Management Group of RWTH Aachen University. He also is the co-director of the MIT Smart Customization Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. Before starting his recent position in Aachen in spring 2007, he worked at the MIT Sloan School of Management (Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group) and has been an Associate Professor of Management at TUM Business School, Technische Universitaet Muenchen (1999-2004). His research focuses on value co-creation between businesses and customers/users and the interface among innovation management, operations management, and marketing. Frequently quoted in The New York Times, The Economist, and Business Week, amongst others, Dr. Piller is regarded as one of the leading experts on mass customization, personalization, and open innovation. His blog, mass-customization.blogs.com, is the premier source of information on mass customization and customer driven value creation. In 1997, his article in the German edition of the Harvard Business Review and his first book on mass customization (1998) brought this topic to the management agenda in Europe. His recent analysis, titled “Threadless” (co-authored with Susumu Ogawa), an innovative crowdsourcing business model for the fashion industry, has been selected as one of the Top-20 articles in the MIT Sloan Management Review. Frank Piller graduated summa cum laude with a Ph.D. in Operations Management from the University of Wuerzburg, Germany in 1999. His habilitation is from TUM Business School. He is a fellow of the German Scholarship Foundation and a founding member of the European Academy of Management. His research is supported by grants from industry and the German Federal Ministry of Research (BMBF), the European Community, and other institutions. As a founding partner of Think Consult, a management consultancy, he helps his clients to serve their customers better by using truly customer-centric strategies.

The presentation focuses on issues that typically cause pitfalls in the introduction and use of technology in elderly care. The use of gerontechnology, including safety alarm technologies, is increasing. Its influence on service personnel in elderly care has implications on possibilities to root technological innovations into care work. Human impact assessment methodologies may be used to assess competence related to technology use, needs for orientation into technology use and the wellbeing of care personnel. Safety alarms are useful both for actual care work and the administrative part of the care organisation. Care personnel are usually not well informed about technical issues and the resulting organisational changes effected by safety alarms. At individual and work community levels, regular human impact assessment of new technologies may stimulate their adoption by professional caregivers. Assessment should also be conducted from the perspective of elderly customers and their relatives. The presentation is based on empirical research conducted in several large research and development projects in Finland. The research focused on safety telephones and high-tech “wellbeing wristbands”.

Helinä Melkas is an Adjunct Professor of Industrial Management (especially Information Quality) and Senior Research Fellow at Lappeenranta University of Technology, Lahti Unit, Finland. She holds the degree of Doctor of Science in Technology from Helsinki University of Technology‘s Department of Industrial Engineering and Management. She has earlier degrees in the social sciences from the University of Helsinki and Åbo Akademi University, Finland. She has also worked at the International Labour Office (Geneva), United Nations University/WIDER (Helsinki), and the Finnish Ministry of Labour as well as in Japan. Her research interests are, inter alia, gerontechnology, technology foresight and assessment, elderly care services, innovation processes, information quality, social networks and employment issues. She has several international expert assignments, for instance at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA, USA). She is also a member of the Editorial Board of International Journal of Information Quality. Her most important publications include “Towards holistic management of information within service networks: Safety telephone services for ageing people” (2004) as well as “Analyzing information quality in virtual networks of the services sector with qualitative interview data” (in Al-Hakim, Latif, ed., Challenges of Managing Information Quality in Service Organizations, 2007).

In this presentation we examine three types of aging anxiety among baby-boomers in the United States and discuss their implications for the silver market (i.e. older consumers). We use data from a national sample of 473 baby-boomers to examine the structure and predictors of aging anxiety. We find that three dimensions adequately describe the apprehensions that this generation have about growing old: anxiety over the loss of autonomy emerged as the most powerful factor, followed by uneasiness over the physical manifestations of aging, and optimism/pessimism with regard to expecting continuity and contentment in old age. A variety of factors are associated with these dimensions, including gender, marital status, income, knowledge about aging, and exposure to older adults. We discuss how an appreciation of the sources of aging anxiety among baby-boomers can help marketers and advertisers better understand the pre-elderly consumer market, and suggest ways of addressing baby-boomers’ fears with positive images of growing old.

Most industrialized countries are currently facing a shrinking and aging of the population. Germany’s population is expected to fall from about 82.4 million people to between 69 and 74 million people in 2050. Simultaneously, the average age of the population is increasing. Eastern Germany in particular will in the coming years be characterized by a strong decline in the number of young people and a significant increase in the number of elderly. However, demographic change does not automatically imply negative consequences; it also creates room for opportunities. In this chapter, we explore opportunities to include a significant economic component in the educational silver market, a consideration made possible due to two developments. First, current and upcoming generations of seniors increasingly spend their spare time studying intellectual and cultural subjects; second, traditional universities suffer from a low number of students. We consider the incentives to include more people aged 65 and over in educational issues, and thus to create a win-win situation for both “third agers” and institutions of higher education.

This presentation will focus on the changing face of the silver market and how marketers could prepare to better serve the needs of tomorrow’s older consumers. It will examine the aging processes that affect consumption patterns of older consumers in the context of a changing global environment, and how these changes could be used by marketers to develop effective marketing strategies for the evolving silver market. Topics of the presentation include: generational differences, market segmentation and positioning strategies, and marketing tactics to target the moving segments of the expanding silver market.

Dr. George Moschis is Professor of Marketing at Georgia State University, U.S.A., where he is also an Alfred Bernhardt Research Professor and the Director of the Center for Mature Consumer Studies. He founded and has directed the Center, and has been on the Gerontology Faculty of his University for the past 20 years. Dr. Moschis has been a pioneer in developing educational material, including a course that was the first of its kind: Marketing to Older Adults. He has studied consumers of different generations in numerous countries around the globe, and is the author of six books on the same topic, including Baby Boomers and Their Parents, which contains the findings of his research on U.S. generations over the past 30 years. He has been recognized both by his peers in academics and by business practitioners for his contributions to the field of consumer behavior and marketing, and has helped numerous types of organizations worldwide with issues related to generational marketing.

As Japan’s aging rapidly proceeds, the market for the elderly grows. Health care service is one of the most promising industries because numbers of customers are increasing and producers are still underdeveloped; various regulations still impede new entries. If these obstacles are removed, the demand for health care services could potentially increase, and productivity level could be improved through competition. The major issues here are revision of the rules banning the mixing of public and private health insurance, and public financing of hospitals. Demand for nursing care services is also expanding; concurrently, as labor market conditions tighten, nursery schools for children are becoming more important as more Japanese women start working full-time. Both phenomena are affected by Japan’s changing family structure, with its continuously declining share of three generation households, and are also under heavy government intervention. Thus, regulatory reform is a key to develop these silver industries in Japan.

Dr. Naohiro Yashiro is Professor in the College of Liberal Arts at International Christian University, Tokyo. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Maryland in 1981. From 1992 to 2001 he was Professor at the Institute of International Relations for Advanced Studies on Peace and Development in Asia, Sophia University. From 2000 to 2005 he was President of the Japan Center for Economic Research. In 2006, he became a member of the Economic and Fiscal Policy Council. His publications in English include The Economic Effects of Aging in the United States and Japan (coedited), and Health Care Issues in the United States and Japan, both published by the University of Chicago Press.

Sue Tempest is an Associate Professor of Strategic Management at Nottingham University Business School, The University of Nottingham, UK and Co-Director of Nottingham University Business School’s Executive MBA Programme. She received her MBA and a PhD in strategic management and organizational learning in the television industry from the University of Nottingham. Her research interests include: organizational learning and management education; strategy and new forms of organization and resultant career issues; the impact of demographic ageing on strategic management; and strategy and entrepreneurship. She has published in journals such as Organization Science, Human Relations, Organization Studies, Journal of Management Studies, Long Range Planning, Management Learning and European Management Review. She has a range of publications considering the role of liminal workers in organizational learning and strategy, including the following coauthored articles: “Grey Advantage: New Strategies for the Old” (Long Range Planning Vol. 35, No. 5, 2002) and “Careering Alone: Careers and social capital in the financial services and television industries“ (Human Relations Vol. 57, No. 12, 2004).

The unprecedented aging of Japan’s population presents costs and opportunities for its future as a society and as a major economic power. Japan’s seniors already control the largest portion of the nation’s wealth, but in the very near future they will also consume the lion’s share of the social expense for care and living as they age and their proportion in the total population increases. In this paper we examine two areas which promise major commercial opportunities because of the vast socio-demographic change linked to a huge pool of liquid assets. Those areas are, firstly, catering to the financial needs of the country’s senior citizens and, secondly, responding to their particular preferences and requirements for housing. In Japan’s generally sluggish market for housing and financial services, the “silver market” provides one of the richest segments available, but successfully offering such services to this population requires skill, sensitivity and an understanding of the evolving consumer mindset in Japan.

Kenneth Alan Grossberg received his Ph.D. at Princeton University in Politics & East Asian Studies in 1977. Elected a Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows, Harvard University (1974), Prof. Grossberg was a published authority on Japanese history before he became a specialist in international marketing and Asian political economy. He has worked in investment banking and strategic consulting in addition to the academic world. Prof. Grossberg started his academic career at Harvard, but in 1980 he turned to the private sector. Fluent in Japanese and Chinese, he was the first investment banker at Prudential-Bache Securities to work on mergers and acquisitions in the Asian market. He left investment banking to establish the strategic consulting firm Orient-West Consultants, Inc. and in 1985 Citibank recruited him to be Vice President and Chief of Strategy for their Consumer Services Group / International in the Asia Pacific region. As chief of strategy he was responsible for managing Citibank’s strategic planning process in ten Asian countries and for creating and directing the bank’s successful consumer banking strategy in Japan. In the late 1980s he returned to the academic world when Yeshiva University invited him to develop the marketing program for their new Syms School of Business. In 1992 Dr. Grossberg was awarded a Fulbright Visiting Research Professorship to Tel Aviv University where over the next decade he developed and managed high-tech, client-oriented and client-financed consulting joint ventures with MBA programs in Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard, the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, the Technion, Nanyang Technological University, Columbia Business School’s Fundamentals of Management Asia program, and Hebrew University. In 2001 he became the first and only non-Japanese professor to be granted tenure at the International Management (MBA) program of Waseda University in Tokyo, and in 2002 he founded the Waseda Marketing Forum.

This session discusses how social networking and Web video, two of the applications enabled by Web 2.0 technologies, are becoming increasingly important in improving communications between companies and their older customers. The functionality of these applications will be explained, as will the way they are used by the marketing community. Both these technologies were developed for a younger market but have rapidly evolved to become age-neutral. The way Web 2.0 applications are likely to develop is then discussed in the context of their importance to older consumers. The session concludes by recommending the actions companies should take to fully exploit their marketing potential.

Dick Stroud is a consultant, lecturer and writer. He is the founder and managing director of the marketing consultancy 20plus30, which assists companies improve all aspects of their marketing to the over-50 generation. Before launching 20plus30 he worked in the digital marketing industry and was the author of Internet Strategies (Palgrave), as well as founder and CEO of the strategy consultancy of the same name. Stroud’s early career included working for IBM and PA Management Consultants. Currently, he is the training course director at the Chartered Institute of Marketing and a visiting lecturer at the London Business School. His latest book, The 50-Plus Market (Kogan Page) explains why rapidly changing population demographics demand that companies reevaluate all aspects of their sales and marketing and evolve from being age-centric to age-neutral. Dick is a regular speaker at European marketing conferences and writes for Marketing Forum, CriticalEye, Marketing Week and Marketing.

Japan may have the oldest population in the world but marketers are wrong in thinking it is primarily a market for healthcare, insurance and robot nursing services. The Dankai (the Japanese baby boomer equivalent) began retiring in 2007, and we are constantly surprised by their unexpected responses to their new lives. Based on over five years of constant investigation, this paper looks at how the retiring generations of today are coping with what we often refer to as “new life building”. Also discussed will be examples of these new retirees’ attitudes to life, their dreams, ambitions, desires – and how these are affecting marketers. From the obvious role of the Wii as the most important health product of the decade, we will also cover travel market changes and the desire for electric guitars.

David McCaughan holds degrees in Library Science and Political Science, as well as graduate qualifications in Marketing. In 1986, he joined McCann Erickson Sydney in 1996 building the Planning and Research function. In late 1995 McCaughan took on a new role as Consumer Insights Director for the Asia Region, moving to Bangkok and taking on the responsibility for Insights and Planning for over twenty offices in 18 countries. In 1998-99 he was Managing Director of McCann Thailand before moving Hong Kong in 2000 to take on the role of Regional Planning Director for Asia. His initiatives include the McCann PULSE™, which since 1996 has involved weekly dialogues with consumers in 20 major Asian cities and the constant study of the popular culture affecting people’s decision making. The program is now active in over 80 countries worldwide. In 2003, he was appointed Executive Vice President and Director of Strategic Planning for McCann Erickson Japan. And in 2007 his role was expanded to Director of Strategic Planning for the Asia Pacific region. Prior to joining McCann, McCaughan’s varied background included having worked as a yoghurt maker, children’s librarian, menswear salesman and butler. He has spoken at over 400 conferences on aspects of marketing and is a regular columnist and author of marketing articles.

Data generated across numerous service industries in Australia support the results of previous studies, which have emphasized the importance of customer service to older consumers. In particular, seniors value warm, genuine interactions that allow them to form relationships with service providers. These relationships provide assurance that their functional needs will be met and also constitute a means of achieving satisfying human contact in their lives. This emphasis on relationships reflects seniors’ more vulnerable physical and psychological status, which increases their reliance on service providers for a range of market and social outcomes. Other customer service priorities for seniors include the provision of clear and relevant information in multiple formats, the minimization of waiting times, and assistance with product location. The primary implication for marketers is the need to ensure staff recruitment and training procedures that are capable of delivering front-line employees who can produce satisfying functional and psychological outcomes for older consumers. Hiring and retaining older members of staff may be an important means of achieving this objective.

Simone Pettigrew is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing in the UWA Business School at the University of Western Australia. Prior to becoming an academic researcher, Dr. Pettigrew was employed in marketing positions within the Australian energy sector. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Western Australia and has published research in a variety of journals, including Marketing Theory, International Journal of Advertising, International Journal of Consumer Studies, Journal of Consumer Marketing, Australasian Journal on Ageing, Qualitative Market Research, British Food Journal, Food Quality and Preference, and Journal of Food Products Marketing. She has won numerous competitive grants from Australian and international funding organizations. Her current grant-funded projects focus on vulnerable consumers, especially seniors and children. Specific areas of interest include childhood obesity, age-related mental illness, and alcohol-related harm during adolescence. Simone is founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Research for Consumers (www.jrconsumers.com). Since 2001, JRC has published research that educates, empowers, and benefits consumers. As a web-based publication that successfully targets academic, consumer, and public policy audiences, JRC makes new consumer behavior knowledge accessible to multiple target groups. Simone also serves on the editorial board for the journal Consumption, Markets and Culture and is a founding member of the Transformative Consumer Research (TCR) Advisory Board. TCR is an approach to consumer research that encourages researchers to use their knowledge and expertise to investigate issues of importance to consumers. The TCR Board has been assembled by the Association for Consumer Research to encourage and guide the development of a consumer focus in the discipline of Marketing. In her capacity as a pro-consumer specialist, Dr. Pettigrew has been invited to speak on this topic at seminars and conferences in Australia, Europe, and the US.

Very recent accidents have shown that manufacturers have not paid enough attention to ensuring the safety of products targeted at the silver market. This presentation will analyze a concrete example of an accident to demonstrate the ever increasing need to design products specifically for the silver market and not just adapt an existing design to a different marketing label. The two main pillars of usability and safety will be introduced and the speaker will present already existing standards for both aspects. He will explain the shortcomings of present standards and introduce functional safety and robotics standards still in the pipeline. The objective of the presentation is to make manufacturers aware that usability and safety must already be built during the design phase, and that business opportunities will only turn into reality if the needs of the silver market are fulfilled in a safe and consistent way. The development of standards with the cooperation with testing institutes such as TÜV Rheinland are imperative to achieving this goal.

Yoshihiro Sugita, Senior Manager of Business Development of TÜV Rheinland Japan, has been contributing to the development of business in Japan through encouraging international and national standardization of safety standards. Sugita has been working as an inspector for industrial machinery since he joined TÜV Rheinland Japan in 1995. His work with machinery safety, which includes all kinds of hazards, is affecting standards development. He is a member of ISO/TC199 (Safety of Machinery) in Japan; IEC/TC44 (Safety of Machinery Electrotechnical aspects) in Japan; Working group for developing Safety Guidelines for New Generation Robots in Japan; and ACGIH (American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists). He is also member and Co-chair of the International Compliance Regulatory Committee of SEMI Japan. He received his Bachelor of Engineering at Osaka Electronic Communication University. He coauthored the Handbook of International Standards, Nos. 2 through 5 (Japan Standards Association).

Florian Kohlbacher is a Research Fellow at the German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ) Tokyo. He holds a Master’s degree and a Doctorate from the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration. At the DIJ, Florian Kohlbacher is in charge of a research project on the business implications of demographic change. He is also an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Institute for Technology and Innovation Management at Hamburg University of Technology, a Fellow of the World Demographic Association and an Honorary Member of the International Mature Marketing Network, as well as a part-time lecturer at various universities in Tokyo. He is the author of International Marketing in the Network Economy: A Knowledge-based Approach (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) and co-editor with Cornelius Herstatt of The Silver Market Phenomenon: Business Opportunities in an Era of Demographic Change (Springer, September 2008).

This presentation introduces the new research field of Cybernics, a domain of frontier science that centers on cybernetics, mechatronics, and informatics, and integrates human and robot (RT: robotics technology) functionally, organically and socially with information technology (IT). A pioneering achievement in this field is the robot suit HAL (Hybrid Assistive Limb), developed by the speaker, a cyborg-type robot that can expand and improve physical capability. HAL enhances and strengthens the limb motion of human bodies by detecting, through the body, the weak bioelectrical signal from the brain that generates the nerve signal to control the musculoskeletal system. HAL is expected to be applied in various fields such as nursing care support, activities of daily living support for disabled people, heavy labour support at factories, physical training support and rescue support at disaster sites, as well as in the entertainment field. This presentation will show how cybernics-based solutions like HAL will play an important role in ageing societies and the lives of those people who have to cope with its consequences.

Yoshiyuki Sankai received his Ph.D. in engineering from University of Tsukuba, Japan in 1987. He was Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and Professor of the Institute of Systems and Engineering at the University of Tsukuba, and a Visiting Professor at Baylor College of Medicine in the USA. Currently, he is professor at the Graduate School of Systems and Information Engineering, University of Tsukuba, and president of CYBERDYNE Inc. He is also president of the Japan Society of Embolus Detection and Treatment, the chairman of the International Journal of the Robotics Society of Japan (RSJ), and an executive board member of RSJ. Now he has become the creator of the world’s most advanced technology: “Cybernics”, including the Robot Suit HAL, medical technologies, and welfare. He provided direction on the future of science and technology for the prime minister and his cabinet members at the Council for Science and Technology Policy at the prime minister’s office in 2006. He won the World Technology Award in 2005, Good Design Gold Award in 2006, the 2006 Japan Innovator Award, the Best Paper Award (International Journal of Advanced Robotics) in 2006, Awards from the American Society for Artificial Organs, an Award from the International Society for Artificial Organs, Award from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in Japan in 2007, a NISTEP award from the National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (MEXT) in 2007 and so on. Recently, he was selected as the leader of the Global COE (Centers of Excellence) program “Cybernics” (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan). He has also obtained large NEDO grants (from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan), grants for Health Science (from the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare of Japan), and a large grant-in-aid for scientific research (from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan). Now, he is promoting the application of HAL technology to senior citizens and/or physically challenged people.

The seal robot has been developed for two purposes; one is substitution for pet animals at home, and the other is substitution for animal therapy at hospitals and elderly care institutions. Through many kinds of experiments, results have shown that interaction with the seal robot has three kinds of effects on the interacting human: psychological effects such as comforting and recovery from depression, physiological effects such as stress reduction and improvement of brain function, and social effects such as activation of communication. Since 2005, more than 1000 seal robots have been in use as a commercial product in Japan. About 65% of the customers are individuals from 40 to 80 years of age; those in their 60s comprise the majority. In addition, seal robots have been in test or practical use in more than 20 countries.

Dr. Takanori Shibata and received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Electro-Mechanical Engineering from Nagoya University in ‘89, ‘91, and ‘92, respectively. He was a research scientist at the Mechanical Engineering Lab, AIST, Ministry of International Trade and Industry from 1993 to 1998. Concurrently, he was a postdoctoral associate at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab from 1995 to 1997. He was a visiting researcher at the Artificial Intelligence Lab, University of Zurich, in 1996 and at the Artificial Intelligence Lab, MIT, in 1998. He was a senior research scientist at the Mechanical Engineering Lab., National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) from 1998 to 2001. Dr. Shibata has been a senior research scientist at Intelligent Systems Research Institute, AIST since ’01. Concurrently, he has also been a research scientist for a project on “interaction and intelligence” at the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) from 2001 to 2008. He is a member of the IEEE and other scientific and technical societies. His research interests include human-robot interaction, human interactive robots, emotional robots, robot therapy, and humanitarian de-mining. He has published many papers and books. He was certified as the inventor of a seal robot named Paro, the World’s Most Therapeutic Robot, by Guinness World Records in 2002. He has received many awards, including the 2006 Robot of the Year Award from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Japan; The Outstanding Young Person (TOYP) of the world from Junior Chamber International in 2004; and the Japanese Prime Minister’s Award in 2003.

Hang Chang Chieh received his Ph.D degree in Control Engineering from the University of Warwick, England, in 1973. From 1974 to 1977, he worked as a Computer and Systems Technologist at Shell Eastern Petroleum Company (Singapore) and Shell International Petroleum Company (The Netherlands). Since 1977, he has been with the National University of Singapore, serving in various positions including Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Head of the Department of Electrical Engineering. From 1994 to 2000, he served as the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University in charge of research. From 2001 to 2003, he was nominated to the Agency for Science, Technology and Research to serve as its Executive Deputy Chairman. Since 2004, he has resumed his academic career at the National University of Singapore. His current appointments include Chairman of Management Board, Interactive & Digital Media Institute of NUS, and Head of Division of Engineering and Technology Management, Faculty of Engineering. Dr. Hang received the 2000 National Science & Technology Medal for his leadership and contributions to science and technology development in Singapore. He was elected a Fellow of IEEE in 1998 and a Foreign Member of the Royal Academy of Engineering, UK in 2000. He has served as the founding Chairman of the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) since 2001. Currently, he also serves as non-executive Chairman of two high-tech companies and as board member of another five public and private companies.

Because of Japan’s rapidly aging society, Panasonic is aligning its product development process accordingly. This presentation will explain and discuss the following points in detail:

1. Universal design
   
2. Ubiquitous network
   
3. New business areas, as well as ubiquitous technology.

Affiliation:

• Panasonic Corporation
• System Solutions Company
• Advanced Technology Development Center

Area of expertise:

• Ubiquitous Sensor Network

Academic background:

• Master of Engineering

Demographic change will pose both challenges and opportunities for companies. The ratio of people over 65 years of age will rise in all developed countries. At the same time, the number of younger people, and thus recruits at all education levels, will decline. The employment rate of aged people will therefore rise. Companies can react on many different levels. On the one hand, they can make it a business opportunity by developing and selling products and services that help their clients treat or support older people. We will show some examples from the field of medical technology. On the other hand, companies will have to cope with fewer younger workers. They will have to prevent loss of skills through retirement, accommodate older workers, and/or operate with fewer workers. These challenges can lead to products and services that help companies solve the issues involved. We show some examples of such products. We observe that many such products have benefits that are not specific to older workers but support all employees. Many technical products that become interesting in times of demographic change will therefore not be “silver specific” products, but products “designed for all” with an emphasis on usability and problem solving.

Peter Mertens is head of the Corporate Technology department of Siemens in Japan. After obtaining his PhD in Physics from Phillipps-Universitaet Marburg, he joined Siemens AG, a global electrics and electronics giant, and worked for the Corporate Technology, Power Generation and Transportation Systems groups. His management experience includes leading project teams and departments responsible for engineering processes; manufacturing productivity improvement and restructuring; product management and R&D for a Light Rail vehicle platform; and corporate R&D strategy. He has researched and published on the statistical theory of fully developed turbulence, HW-SW codesign methods, full text database and pattern recognition techniques in the requirements phase of plant design, various aspects of innovation strategy in a diversified company, and the impact of demographic change on technology companies. His recent publications include: Kuebler, A. Mertens, P. Russell, S., and Tevis, R. (2008), “Enterprises Face the Aging Demographic – Some options to overcome demographic challenges in a multinational company“ (International Journal of Human Resource Management and Development [IJHRMD], special issue on “Aging Workforce and HRM”), and Mertens, P., Russell, S. and Steinke, I. (2008), “Silver Markets and business customers: Opportunities for industrial markets?” (in Kohlbacher, F. and Herstatt, C., eds., The Silver Market Phenomenon: Business Opportunities in an Era of Demographic Change., Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, New York, 2008).

Statistics predict that 43% of Japan’s population will be over 50 by the year 2010. Knowing this, the manufacturing industry has shifted its emphasis to new overseas markets like the BRIC countries, or attempted to strengthen Japan’s already strong reliance on exports to developed countries in Europe and America. Obviously, manufacturers should choose a basic strategy that either maintains or expands the scale of their business. On the other hand, one could say that as a result, there has been a shortage of innovation strategies for the silver market – which promises to become the majority share of the domestic market.

Yonoshin Mori is the Director of Arthur D. Little Japan, Inc. His company offers support in corporate management reform and innovation primarily for companies in the fields of information technology, machinery, consumer goods, and distribution. They offer consulting to individual companies who wish to rethink their business strategy and their deployment of technological and intellectual property resources; they also offer advice in restructuring. He completed a Master’s course in mechanical engineering with the Department of Engineering at Tohoku University. He received his MBA from the University of California, Berkeley. He is a member of the Industrial Structure Council, Section Meeting of Policy on Intellectual Property, Subcommittee on Management and Information Disclosure (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry). He is also a member of the Ministry’s Study Group for the Fluidization and Securitization of Patent Rights among others. His many publications include the coathored A Practical Guide to Strategic Intellectual Property Management (Chûô keizai shuppansha, 2004).

Kazuki NISHIKAWA
It is said that by the year 2055, one of every 2.5 people in Japan will be over 65; this would be the most rapid transformation into an aging society on the globe. Amidst declining birth rates, the baby boomer dankai generation is starting to reach the age of retirement. The number of so-called “active seniors”, rich in leisure time, health as well as in property, is on the rise – so there is no doubt that the senior market will change in size as well as character. The Dentsu Senior Project has the mission of “developing the unexplored senior market and, through cooperation of industry, government and universities, create a society where seniors can live happily”. To that end, we are involved in development activities, particularly business geared to active seniors. This paper will introduce our initiative, as well as relate some of the struggles our client companies have had with the changing vicissitudes of the senior market. Finally, from our perspective as an advertising company, we will present the “senior marketing” strategies we have discovered through various examples experienced by our client companies.

Kazuki Nishikawa is General Manager of the Senior Market Development Department at Dentsu, Inc. He graduated from the Department of Political Economy at Waseda University with a degree in politics in 1980. He went to work with Dentsu the same year. Over the next nine years, he worked with over 60 client companies as a copywriter with the Creative Division. From 1988, he worked with the Executive Account Division for fifteen years, where he managed about 30 client companies. In 2003, he moved to the Social Projects Section of the Project Production Division. Through collaborations with government offices, Japan Broadcasting Corporation, and businesses, he helped launch a number of social business projects at the citizen level. He has held his current position since 2005. Along with carrying out educational activities based on insight analysis, he is now promoting several business developments for cultivating an “active senior market”. For example, taking advantage of his experiences in sales and social business, he arranges tie-ups with media and also collaboration with companies that have a large membership network of senior citizens as clients. Since September 2006, he has been on the Board of Senior Direct, Inc., a joint venture launched by Senior Communication, OPT, and Dentsu. His publications include Dantai Marketing, edited by Dentsu Senior Project (Dentsukan).

Cornelius Herstatt is Managing Director and full professor with the Institute for Technology and Innovation Management (TIM) at the Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH). He is also a founding partner of the European Institute for Technology and Innovation Management (EITIM). He has published various books and over 130 papers on innovation and technology management. His main research areas are: Front End of Innovation, management of innovation projects, lead user management, open innovation and Innovation Off shoring. He is involved in research projects in Japan, India and the USA besides his work in Germany. Cornelius Herstatt is member of the German Association for Professors of Business Administration, member of various editorial boards and Area Manager of the International Journal for Innovation and Technology Management. He is an alumni/fellow of JSPS (Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science), World Demographic Association (WDA), East West Centre (Hawaii) and Templeton College (Oxford/UK).

Demographic statistics allow projections that come close to implications from laws of nature. The trend towards an aging society represents a classic example. However, drawing stringent and reality-related conclusions from this obvious development has been neglected in academia as well as in applied economics. One reason may well be the inherent deficiency of common university research approaches to focus primarily on singular disciplinary fields while neglecting the highly multi-disciplinary nature of real life. The obvious value and challenge of this symposium is therefore twofold: Due to its explicitly interdisciplinary diversity of contributions to the Silver Market phenomenon it overcomes the usual isolated reflections on issues of prime societal concern. Simultaneously it contains the promising potential to reveal approaches that could be applied to current and future public and business practice in response to the ongoing trend of aging society.

Prof. em. Hugo Tschirky, PhD, DBA, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Department of Management, Technology, and Economics

• ETH-Masters-Degree in Mechanical Engineering with majors in Process Engineering, Automatic Control, and Nuclear Engineering (1964).
  
• ETH-Doctorate in Nuclear Engineering (1968).
  
• ETH-Doctorate in Business Administration (1978).
  
• ETH-medals for master thesis and doctorate.

• Research on safety of nuclear power stations and fast breeder reactors (1968-71, San Diego, USA)
  
• CEO of Carl Zeiss Zurich AG (1971-1976, optics & electronics)
  
• CEO of Cerberus AG (1976-1982, leading security company, 3000 employees)
  
• Full Professor of Business Administration at ETH Zürich (1982-2006, focus on strategic management, technology & innovation management, management of innovation- & knowledge-intensive companies)
  
• Sabbatical at Tokyo Institute of Technology (1992)
  
• Sabbatical at Sloan School of Management (MIT, 2000)
  
• various Board of Director’s memberships (Canon Switzerland, Dräger, LogObject, B’Results, etc)

Book Publications:

• Technology & Innovation Management on the Move (2003)
  
• Structured Creativity (2006)
  
• Sustained Innovation Management (2007)
  

The Silver Market is expected to create many opportunities for new products and services that could be quite different from those geared toward young and affluent consumers. Disruptive technologies are those that are not attractive to the current mainstream market (younger consumers) but are appreciated in a fringe, emerging market (silver market). Disruptive innovation that produces new products with decent technology/performance and that are simultaneously very affordable and easy-to-use for senior citizens will hence play an increasing role in the emerging silver market. For instance, in PCs for senior citizens, many software packages for business productivity are no longer essential, as such customers look for simple application software at moderate prices. While PC hardware should be good and yet affordable, one market feedback item is that it should not look very different from other general purpose PCs, as senior citizens may not like to admit that they are old. Hence, one view is that the hardware itself could be general purpose, such as the low-cost yet good quality Eee-PC, rather than a specially designed machine with its own look. However, some modifications such as the size of the keys and the characters on the screen should certainly be provided to make these computers user-friendly to senior citizens.

Hang Chang Chieh received his Ph.D degree in Control Engineering from the University of Warwick, England, in 1973. From 1974 to 1977, he worked as a Computer and Systems Technologist at Shell Eastern Petroleum Company (Singapore) and Shell International Petroleum Company (The Netherlands). Since 1977, he has been with the National University of Singapore, serving in various positions including Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Head of the Department of Electrical Engineering. From 1994 to 2000, he served as the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University in charge of research. From 2001 to 2003, he was nominated to the Agency for Science, Technology and Research to serve as its Executive Deputy Chairman. Since 2004, he has resumed his academic career at the National University of Singapore. His current appointments include Chairman of Management Board, Interactive & Digital Media Institute of NUS, and Head of Division of Engineering and Technology Management, Faculty of Engineering. Dr. Hang received the 2000 National Science & Technology Medal for his leadership and contributions to science and technology development in Singapore. He was elected a Fellow of IEEE in 1998 and a Foreign Member of the Royal Academy of Engineering, UK in 2000. He has served as the founding Chairman of the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) since 2001. Currently, he also serves as non-executive Chairman of two high-tech companies and as board member of another five public and private companies.

The demographic issue does not only mean that products and services have to be adapted; there is another increasingly important task: How to maintain and balance performance as well as innovation on the desired high level with a “graying workforce”. Is this only an issue for human resources management? No – in today’s businesses and services knowledge is the key success factor, and critical knowledge does not reside only in individuals. Knowledge of an organization can be segmented into different knowledge areas. The knowledge in any area is distributed across three classes of knowledge carriers and accordingly three forms of knowledge: individuals with their individual competencies, groups or organizational units with distributed networked knowledge in the form of complementary competencies (and the collective knowledge that acts as the “adhesive” between these competencies), and finally, more or less codified, i.e. defined and structured knowledge. From this comprehensive knowledge perspective, the basic questions raised by the graying workforce issue must be reconsidered and Knowledge Strategies leading to effective Knowledge Management (KM) programs must be defined. Two examples will be discussed in more detail: (1) Maintaining an adequate performance level in spite of the baby boomer wave of “leaving experts”. (2) Balancing potentially decreasing innovation capabilities against increasing optimization, i.e. the performance capabilities inherent in graying workforces.

Dr. Josef Hofer-Alfeis is an electrical engineer and has been active since 1990 as a consultant, researcher and lecturer in Knowledge and Innovation Management. Since February 2007 Dr. Hofer-Alfeis is management consultant for Knowledge, Innovation and Intellectual Capital Management and partner in Amontis Consulting AG, Heidelberg, where he directs the competence center. He does consulting for various small and medium sized enterprises as well as for large corporations. He became the moderator of a German cross-company network of knowledge management practitioners in 1997, which has now grown to more than 110 members from 70 firms (www.wimip.de). He lectures in Knowledge Management at four universities in Germany and Austria. From 1984 to 2007, Dr. Hofer-Alfeis performed research and consulting on business processes and knowledge and idea/innovation management at Siemens AG in various organizational units, e.g. Corporate Technology. He was moderator of the Siemens-wide Community of Practice Knowledge Management for ten years as well as a core team member in the Community of Practice Innovation Management. 2004-2007 he led cross-organizational teams as Corporate Process Executive for Intellectual Capital Management in order to guide the integration of knowledge, ideas, innovation and intellectual property management according to corporation-wide process standards. Prior to this, Dr. Hofer-Alfeis was a member of the Corporate Knowledge Management Unit, supporting e.g. business owners and their management teams to define, execute and control knowledge strategies that would align their intellectual capital with major business ambitions.

Due to demographic changes, the personnel structure of the workforce in countries like Germany and Japan will change considerably during the next years. At the same time, companies need creative and skilled human resources that can innovate. Ageing employees, skills shortages, and knowledge losses due to the retirement wave of the “baby boomers” could hamper the innovativeness and rate of change of whole nations.
Three main assumptions are presented and discussed:

• Empirical data show that there is no direct link between an increasingly elderly labour force and a decrease in corporate innovation.
  
• However, companies with a high proportion of older (50+) employees invest less in professional development than companies with an average proportion of aged people. This contradicts the call for lifelong learning.
  
• There will be a strong need to support human resource management in identifying, supporting and developing innovative capabilities – without discriminating against elderly employees. Knowledge management and qualification programs are becoming critical for the continued success of enterprises in these countries.

Christiane Hipp became Vice Dean of the faculty in 2007 and full professor of Organisation, Human Resource Management and General Management at the Brandenburg University of Technology in 2005. She received her diploma in industrial engineering in 1994 and her Ph.D. in economics in 1999. From 1995 until 1999 Hipp was research associate at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research and from 1999 to 2005 she worked as a senior technology manager for several companies (e.g., Vodafone) while she continued her research at the Hamburg University of Technology in the area of innovation management. There she received her “Habilitation” in 2006. She was a visiting scholar at the University of Manchester’s Centre for Research on Innovation and Competition. Her areas of interest include service innovation, innovation strategies, intellectual property and innovation processes. She has published several articles in these areas, including “Service peculiarities and the specific role of technology in service innovation management” (International Journal of Services and Technology Management Vol. 9, No. 2, 2008) and “Innovation in the Service Sector: The demand of service-specific innovation measurement concepts” (Research Policy Vol. 34, No. 4, 2005).

21st century Japan and its shrinking population need a new survival strategy, and we’d like to dub that solution “slim Japan”. We use the word “slim” in the sense that Japan as a whole must become streamlined. S stands for sustainable, environmentally friendly practices; L means a livable society; I is for the innovative technologies and systems that will make that possible; and M is for achieving a mature society not only in age but in mindset as well. At our institute, we use population change data to predict effects on a variety of fields (economy, business, social, health and welfare, education and culture, government, domestic policy, energy and environment, science and technology, international relation) and propose appropriate policy measures for the medium and long term. In this talk, however, I speak specifically about the new technologies that will support our shrinking society.

Yuji Wada is Director of the 21st Century Social Systems Research Center at The Institute for Future Technology in Tokyo. He is a standing member of the Japan Society for Future Research. He received his degree in psychology from Rikkyo University in 1974. His main research interests include predicting future scenarios of societies with a decreasing population; areas where science and culture overlap; 21st century health and medical care; risk communication; futurology of the body, and regional development projects. His major publications include Information Transmission from the Regions: What it Will Take for Regional Computerization to Happen (Gyosei, 1989) and Meetings Between Science and Japanese Culture.

Silver market consumers want to surround themselves with products that satisfy both functional and supra-functional needs. These needs include the social, emotional, spiritual and aspirational. This group of customers and consumers will be more demanding than previous generations, expecting excellent usability and products that reflect their individual lifestyles. If a product and/or technology does not resonate with the individual user, a psychological barrier can develop that will hinder the individual developing any “relationship” with that product, thus resulting in its abandonment. Even if the product potentially offers the user significant support (e.g. walking stick/cane for use after hip surgery), unless the individual feels the product satisfies their supra-functional needs and is without stigma, the product will remain unused. In the cases of appropriate products and assistive technologies, the Silver market can impact new product development in a way that will benefit the wider population. By helping stimulate a more holistic designing process leading to more effective design outcomes, Silver Market consumers will help encourage a fusion of functionality and supra-functionality.

Deana McDonagh is an Associate Professor of Industrial Design at the School of Art + Design and the Beckman Institute of Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), USA. Prior to her faculty position in America, she was a Reader in Industrial Design: User-Centred Design in the Department of Design and Technology at Loughborough University, UK. She is a Fellow of the World Demographic Association and the Design Research Society. Her research focuses on how products can empower and enable individuals to live more enriched lives through empathic design research approaches. Recently she has focused on integrating non-designers into the designing process, so that marginalized voices can be heard (e.g. aging citizens, individuals with physical disabilities).

The present baby boomer generation has become an increasingly important target group for the health industry. Within a very short period of time significant new markets have developed and a range of market segmentation attempts are underway. What is most interesting is the broad scope of the industry, ranging from products and services that offer wellness-oriented intangibles to high tech products that enable independent living. The product range also reflects different societal approaches to ageing as well as the diversity of older people, ranging from anti-ageing medicine to services that support active engagement. This diversity is changing the perspective of industry and society on ageing and on older people, who will increasingly be seen as innovators and early adaptors.

Ilona Kickbusch is the chairperson of the renowned St. Gallen World Ageing and Generations Congress organized by the World Demographic Association. She has had a distinguished career with the World Health Organization, at Yale University and as a Fulbright Program distinguished scholar leader. She presently serves as senior health policy advisor to the Swiss Federal Office for Public Health, and is the Director of the Global Health Programme at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland. She is also adjunct Professor at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia and the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, Germany. She advises organizations such as The Federation of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent and the European Foundation Centre and works closely with a range of national and international public health organisations, as well as with the public health programme of the European Commission. She is a sought after speaker and advisor on policies and strategies to promote health at the national and international level. She has published widely – most recently on the health society – and has received many prizes and honours, including an honorary doctorate from the Nordic School of Public Health. She is a member of a wide range of advisory boards in both the academic and the health policy arena and is a member of the Board of the CAREUM Foundation, Zürich, Switzerland. Most recently she served as the Adelaide Thinker in Residence by invitation of the Premier of South Australia. She is a political scientist with a PhD from the University of Konstanz, Germany. Her recent publications include Policy Innovation for Health (ed., Springer 2008) and Health and Modernity, Theoretical Foundations of Health Promotion (ed. with David McQueen et al., Springer 2007).