Leveraging disruptive innovations for the silver market

Abstract

Some researchers have proposed that the silver market might be an ideal field of application for disruptive technologies and innovation, and that there are important business opportunities in this market segment that could be leveraged through them. This chapter builds and extends on this research (a) by analyzing how changes in the external reality of the firm can create new opportunities for the development of disruptive innovations and how R&D has to grasp and react to these changes, and (b) by analyzing the important role of disruptive innovations in aging societies. This chapter aims to contribute to the stream of research on the front-end question of technology creation and the area of purposeful R&D to create disruptive technologies. R&D should consciously match these with potential markets in order to accelerate the pace of business growth through disruptive innovations by investigating R&D efforts for disruptive innovations catering to the needs of the emerging market segment of the so-called silver market. The chapter also contributes to the knowledge of analyzing disruptive potential in R&D activities, and adds to efforts to clarify the concept of disruptive innovations in general. Finally, we also aim to give recommendations to practitioners such as R&D and product managers. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.