Description
Book SynopsisArgues that market rebels also establish fresh niches and fresh cultural styles. This book shows how consumer activists have faced down chain stores and big box retailers, and how anti-biotechnology activists in Germany penetrated pharmaceutical firms and delayed the commercialization of patents.
Trade 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
Table of ContentsPreface ix Chapter 1: From the Invisible Hand to Joined Hands 1 Chapter 2: "You Can't Get People to Sit on an Explosion!": The Cultural Acceptance of the Car in America 18 Chapter 3: Evange-Ale-ists and the Renaissance of Microbrewing 43 Chapter 4: The French Revolution: Collective Action and the Nouvelle Cuisine Innovation 69 Chapter 5: Show Me the Money: Shareholder Activism and Investor Rights 95 Chapter 6: Chain Reaction: The Enactment and Repeal of Anti-Chain Store Laws 119 Chapter 7: Drug Wars: How the Anti-Biotechnology Movement Penetrated German Pharmaceutical Firms and Prevented Technology Commercialization 142 Chapter 8: From Exit to Voice: Advice for Activists 172 Notes 181 Index 197
