From Publishers Weekly
Rao, professor of organizational behavior and human resources at Stanford University, explores the role of collective action in promoting or hindering business innovation. Drawing heavily on theories of social movements, the author posits a cycle of hot causes, unexpected events or innovations, and cool mobilization, activities that channel emotional responses into popular mass actions that anchor new identities embracing or rejecting the hot cause. Rao presents several case studies in which activist behavior either encouraged or impeded the creation and expansion of new markets, technologies or new organizational structures. For example, early 20th-century automobile enthusiasts were able to placate fears about car safety (the hot cause) by staging hundreds of reliability contests that demonstrated the car's safety and practicality to a wide audience (the cool mobilization). Though dryly written and repetitive, the case studies themselves are fascinating and challenge traditional economic models that privilege individual consumer choice while ignoring broader social mobilizations. A final chapter offers advice and strategies for would-be market rebels looking to harness collective action, making this book a useful resource for both citizen activists and corporate leaders and marketers seeking popular support for their products.
(Jan.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
The case studies . . . are fascinating and challenge traditional economic models that privilege individual consumer choice while ignoring broader social mobilizations. A final chapter offers advice and strategies for would-be market rebels looking to harness collective action, making this book a useful resource for both citizen activists and corporate leaders and marketers seeking popular support for their products. -- Publishers Weekly
Market Rebels uses the grassroots movement that led to the widespread acceptance of the motor car as the starting point for a series of brief case studies that look at 'how activists make or break radical innovations.' -- Jonathan Birchall, Financial Times
Rao highlights social movements as underappreciated factors in the market successes of so-called 'radical innovations.' Through well-crafted, intriguing case studies that include the rise of automobiles, microbrewing, nouvelle cuisine, and personal computers, he shows how mobilized activists influence the acceptance of innovations, be they technological, cultural, or structural. . . . Rao's scholarly publications, related to his experience as an organizational sociologist, provide the foundation for this lively, highly accessible volume, which he explicitly directs to the broad public and especially to businesspeople seeking to advance their own innovations. -- Choice
In this volume, Hayagreeva Roa, the Atholl McBean professor of organizational behaviour and human resources at Stanford University's graduate school of business, provides a perspective on the evolution of markets that is largely absent from traditional economic and business literature. -- Micheal J. Kelly, Ottawa Business Journal
The narrative of economic growth is always one of challenges to established interests, In this sense, Rao's book appears at just the right time, when questions about whether and how to bail out entrenched interests--carmakers, financial conglomerates--are persistent. -- Carl Schramm, Stanford Social Innovation Review
[Rao] does provide an insight that should be valuable for both economic and business historians. . . . [His] points . . . deserve to be taken seriously by economic historians as well as by sociologists. -- Paul L. Robertson, Australian Economic History Review
