Silver Markets and Business Customers: Opportunities for Industrial Markets?

Demographic change will pose distinct challenges for companies. The ratio of people over 65 years of age will rise in all triad countries. At the same time, the number of younger people, and thus recruits in all education levels, will drastically decline in Japan and Germany. In the USA, a shortage of highly skilled and educated workers is expected. 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 support older people. On the other hand, companies will have to cope with fewer younger workers. We discuss several ways to do this (1) to prevent loss of skills from retirement, (2) to accommodate older workers, and (3) to survive with fewer workers. These could lead to Business-to-Business (B2B) products and services that can help companies to solve the issues involved. We look at these possibilities in turn, and find that they each lead to ideas that have one or more of the following properties (1) they are actually Business-to-Consumer (B2C) products, (2) they are management or organizational solutions or services, and/or (3) their benefits are not specific to older workers but benefit all employees. Thus, we are led to the conclusion that the technical products best suited for the B2 Industry silver market will not be “silver-specific” products, but products “designed for all” with an emphasis on usability and problem solving.