Customer Reviews

Market Rebels: How Activists Make or Break Radical Innovations

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This book reminded me of an event that took place about ten years ago, when Starbucks came to town and parked their store right next door to my favorite coffee shop in Westport. I thought it would be the end of the best café mocha in town.

Local merchants reacted as though the neighborhood was being invaded. They banded together, posted flyers in their windows, talking to and encouraging local residents to buy from locally owned businesses. It's what Rao describes in his book as "a Hot Cause," an event that stimulates the emotions of people and creates new meaning. Suddenly, at the local coffee shop, we weren't just buying coffee, we were engaging in acts of community loyalty. The local business owners had successfully created what Rao calls a "community of feeling" and through a "cool mobilization" they got merchants and neighbors engaged in actively supporting the Broadway Café' and protesting the opening of a "corporate" coffee shop. The campaign worked so well that the local coffee shop saw their business actually improve after Starbucks moved in right next door.

Rao's book wraps an absorbing, storytelling approach around solid, academic research showing how activists have been the key to the popularization of the automobile (and all this time I thought Henry Ford was solely responsible), the development of the personal computer, the successes, failures, and persistence of chain stores, and the spawning of microbreweries in the U.S.

The author does an amazing job describing how the same underlying processes that spawned all those wonderful innovations (assuming you think cars, good beer, and inexpensive laptops at Best Buy are a good thing) also powered such disparate causes as the antibiotechnology movement in Germany, the slow food (anti-fast food) movement in Europe, the deaf rights movement in France, and shareholder activism in the United States.

This book will unquestionably spur your thinking about how to get people aligned and engaged in your cause - whether it's a business opportunity or your favorite social cause.

One footnote, after ten years of head to head competition, the Starbucks moved out and the Broadway Café' continues to thrive.

Professor Rao has written a compelling, evidence-based,and remarkably useful book. As I wrote on my blog[...]:

The book is full of useful ideas, but perhaps the central one is that, if you want to mobilize networks of people and markets to embrace and spread an idea, you need the one-two punch of a "Hot Cause" and "Cool Solutions." A hot cause like deaths from tobacco or medical errors can be used as springboards to raise awareness, spark motivation, and ignite red-hot outrage. And naming these as enemies is an important step in mobilizing a network or market. But creating the heat isn't enough; the next step needs to be cool solutions. This doesn't just mean identifying technically feasible solutions, it also means finding ways to bind people together, to empower them to take steps that help solve the problem, and to create enduring commitment to implementing solutions.

This is an excellent book for anyone with an interest in social movements -- seeing how "hot causes" incite people to come together and engage in "cool mobilization" to influence markets. This is a very practical book and an interesting read for anyone who is engaged in community organization, responding to activists, or changing markets through social means. Rao gives many great examples ranging from the early automobile industry to microbrewing to nouvelle cuisine, which certainly keeps the reader's attention and interest. It is also a great book from an academic standpoint, giving a fabulous overview of the research on social movements, of which Rao himself is one of the major renowned contributors, yet in a very accessible way. Overall an outstanding book and one I highly recommend.

In the introduction to this book, author Hayagreeva Rao mentions that some sections have appeared in academic journals, but that he's "rewritten [them] for the general reader rather than the specialist in organizational sociology." May all such revisions be so smoothly executed! This fast-paced read features clear concepts and lively prose. Rao examines the role of social activists, especially engaged groups, in the fate of innovation. In doing so, he provides new perspectives on markets and documents that social engagement precedes shifts in the market. He educates readers about the techniques that such activists use, offering several radically different case studies, including the auto industry, microbrews and trends in French cooking. getAbstract recommends Rao's book to anyone involved in innovation or marketing, as well as to students of cultural change.