Markets in the Making

Markets in the Making PDF Author: Michel Callon
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1942130589
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
Slicing through blunt theories of supply and demand, Callon presents a rigorously researched but counterintuitive model of how everyday market activity gets produced. If you’re convinced you know what a market is, think again. In his long-awaited study, French sociologist and engineer Michel Callon takes us to the heart of markets, to the unsung processes that allow innovations to become robust products and services. Markets in the Making begins with the observation that stable commercial transactions are more enigmatic, more elusive, and more involved than previously described by economic theory. Slicing through blunt theories of supply and demand, Callon presents a rigorously researched but counterintuitive model of market activity that emphasizes what people designing products or launching startups soon discover—the inherent difficulties of connecting individuals to things. Callon’s model is founded upon the notion of “singularization,” the premise that goods and services must adapt and be adapted to the local milieu of every individual whose life they enter. Person by person, thing by thing, Callon demonstrates that for ordinary economic transactions to emerge en masse, singular connections must be made. Pushing us to see markets as more than abstract interfaces where pools of anonymous buyers and sellers meet, Callon draws our attention to the exhaustively creative practices that market professionals continuously devise to entangle people and things. Markets in the Making exemplifies how prototypes, fragile curiosities that have only just been imagined, are gradually honed into predictable objects and practices. Once these are active enough to create a desired effect, yet passive enough to be transferred from one place to another without disruption, they will have successfully achieved the status of “goods” or “services.” The output of this more ample process of innovation, as redefined by Callon, is what we recognize as “the market”—commercial activity, at scale. The capstone of an influential research career at the forefront of science and technology studies, Markets in the Making coherently integrates the empirical perspective of product engineering with the values of the social sciences. After masterfully redescribing how markets are made, Callon culminates with a strong empirical argument for why markets can and should be harnessed to enact social change. His is a theory of markets that serves social critique.

Markets in the Making

Markets in the Making PDF Author: Michel Callon
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1942130589
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 270

Get Book Here

Book Description
Slicing through blunt theories of supply and demand, Callon presents a rigorously researched but counterintuitive model of how everyday market activity gets produced. If you’re convinced you know what a market is, think again. In his long-awaited study, French sociologist and engineer Michel Callon takes us to the heart of markets, to the unsung processes that allow innovations to become robust products and services. Markets in the Making begins with the observation that stable commercial transactions are more enigmatic, more elusive, and more involved than previously described by economic theory. Slicing through blunt theories of supply and demand, Callon presents a rigorously researched but counterintuitive model of market activity that emphasizes what people designing products or launching startups soon discover—the inherent difficulties of connecting individuals to things. Callon’s model is founded upon the notion of “singularization,” the premise that goods and services must adapt and be adapted to the local milieu of every individual whose life they enter. Person by person, thing by thing, Callon demonstrates that for ordinary economic transactions to emerge en masse, singular connections must be made. Pushing us to see markets as more than abstract interfaces where pools of anonymous buyers and sellers meet, Callon draws our attention to the exhaustively creative practices that market professionals continuously devise to entangle people and things. Markets in the Making exemplifies how prototypes, fragile curiosities that have only just been imagined, are gradually honed into predictable objects and practices. Once these are active enough to create a desired effect, yet passive enough to be transferred from one place to another without disruption, they will have successfully achieved the status of “goods” or “services.” The output of this more ample process of innovation, as redefined by Callon, is what we recognize as “the market”—commercial activity, at scale. The capstone of an influential research career at the forefront of science and technology studies, Markets in the Making coherently integrates the empirical perspective of product engineering with the values of the social sciences. After masterfully redescribing how markets are made, Callon culminates with a strong empirical argument for why markets can and should be harnessed to enact social change. His is a theory of markets that serves social critique.

The Rule of Three

The Rule of Three PDF Author: Jagdish Sheth
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743234308
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Name any industry and more likely than not you will find that the three strongest, most efficient companies control 70 to 90 percent of the market. Here are just a few examples: McDonald's, Burger King, and Wendy's General Mills, Kellogg, and Post Nike, Adidas, and Reebok Bank of America, Chase Manhattan, and Banc One American, United, and Delta Merck, Johnson & Johnson, and Bristol-Myers Squibb Based on extensive studies of market forces, the distinguished business school strategists and corporate advisers Jagdish Sheth and Rajendra Sisodia show that natural competitive forces shape the vast majority of companies under "the rule of three." This stunning new concept has powerful strategic implications for businesses large and small alike. Drawing on years of research covering hundreds of industries both local and global, The Rule of Three documents the evolution of markets into two complementary sectors -- generalists, which cater to a large, mainstream group of customers; and specialists, which satisfy the needs of customers at both the high and low ends of the market. Any company caught in the middle ("the ditch") is likely to be swallowed up or destroyed. Sheth and Sisodia show how most markets resemble a shopping mall with specialty shops anchored by large stores. Drawing wisdom from these markets, The Rule of Three offers counterintuitive insights, with suggested strategies for the "Big 3" players, as well as for mid-sized companies that may want to mount a challenge and for specialists striving to flourish in the shadow of industry giants. The book explains how to recognize signs of market disruptions that can result in serious reversals and upheavals for companies caught unprepared. Such disruptions include new technologies, regulatory shifts, innovations in distribution and packaging, demographic and cultural shifts, and venture capital as well as other forms of investor funding. Years in the making and sweeping in scope, The Rule of Three provides authoritative, research-based insights into market dynamics that no business manager should be without.

Design a Better Business

Design a Better Business PDF Author: Patrick van der Pijl
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119272114
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
This book stitches together a complete design journey from beginning to end in a way that you’ve likely never seen before, guiding readers (you) step-by-step in a practical way from the initial spark of an idea all the way to scaling it into a better business. Design a Better Business includes a comprehensive set of tools (over 20 total!) and skills that will help you harness opportunity from uncertainty by building the right team(s) and balancing your point of view against new findings from the outside world. This book also features over 50 case studies and real life examples from large corporations such as ING Bank, Audi, Autodesk, and Toyota Financial Services, to small startups, incubators, and social impact organizations, providing a behind the scenes look at the best practices and pitfalls to avoid. Also included are personal insights from thought leaders such as Steve Blank on innovation, Alex Osterwalder on business models, Nancy Duarte on storytelling, and Rob Fitzpatrick on questioning, among others.

Morality, Competition, and the Firm

Morality, Competition, and the Firm PDF Author: Joseph Heath
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199990492
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 425

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Book Description
In this collection of provocative essays, Joseph Heath provides a compelling new framework for thinking about the moral obligations that private actors in a market economy have toward each other and to society. In a sharp break with traditional approaches to business ethics, Heath argues that the basic principles of corporate social responsibility are already implicit in the institutional norms that structure both marketplace competition and the modern business corporation. In four new and nine previously published essays, Heath articulates the foundations of a "market failures" approach to business ethics. Rather than bringing moral concerns to bear upon economic activity as a set of foreign or externally imposed constraints, this approach seeks to articulate a robust conception of business ethics derived solely from the basic normative justification for capitalism. The result is a unified theory of business ethics, corporate law, economic regulation, and the welfare state, which offers a reconstruction of the central normative preoccupations in each area that is consistent across all four domains. Beyond the core theory, Heath offers new insights on a wide range of topics in economics and philosophy, from agency theory and risk management to social cooperation and the transaction cost theory of the firm.

The Manager's Guide to Competitive Marketing Strategies

The Manager's Guide to Competitive Marketing Strategies PDF Author: Norton Paley
Publisher: Thorogood Publishing
ISBN: 1854183656
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
HOW TO MAKE YOUR BUSINESS MORE PROFITABLE AND SUCCESSFUL THROUGH MARKETING.

Competitor Targeting

Competitor Targeting PDF Author: Ian Gordon
Publisher: Etobicoke, Ont. : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
Powerful weapons for waging and winning the business war Most books on competitive intelligence are full of vague theoretical constructs regarding information gathering and storage. This book, on the other hand, gets right down to the nitty-gritty, with proven techniques for identifying and laying waste to a company's most serious competitors. Readers learn why going on the offensive rather than just gathering information on competitors helps increase market share and shareholder value. And they get loads of practical advice and guidance on identifying the most serious competitors, flushing out competitors' secrets, using technology to advance a competitive initiative, creating strong allies, "harvesting" competitors' employees, staging a successful counter offensive when you've been targeted, and much more. Ian Gordon (Toronto, Canada) is President of Convergence Management Consultants, a leading strategic marketing consulting firm. He is a founding member of the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals, President of the Association for the Advancement of Relationship Marketing, and the former head of Ernst & Young's (Toronto) strategic marketing consulting practice.

Grab More Market Share

Grab More Market Share PDF Author: Ross Shafer
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118145453
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 75

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Book Description
Although McDonald's tested the McCafe' concept--offering specialty coffee and smoothies--many years before the recession hit, the official launch took place in early 2009. Why? Because they knew that was when Starbucks' market share was most vulnerable. And, in early 2010, McDonald's raked in $420m, not only stealing a staggering amount of business from Starbucks, but applying so much pressure that in 2009, Starbucks closed over 270 locations. If you want to grow in a slowly recovering economy...a stagnant economy...or even a declining market, your best and only plan is to steal market share from your competitors and to remain reactive to the market's needs. Grab More Market Share will teach professionals how not settle for 1% growth. Ross' research uses rock-solid case studies that teach leaders to leverage the recovery to steal 10-15% market share from competitors. Ross alerts readers to the fact that they must leverage the culture (the public consciousness) to swing dollars towards their organizations. This same discipline will help professionals predict the next human behavior changes in buying habits.

The Profit Paradox

The Profit Paradox PDF Author: Jan Eeckhout
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691224293
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
A pioneering account of the surging global tide of market power—and how it stifles workers around the world In an era of technological progress and easy communication, it might seem reasonable to assume that the world’s working people have never had it so good. But wages are stagnant and prices are rising, so that everything from a bottle of beer to a prosthetic hip costs more. Economist Jan Eeckhout shows how this is due to a small number of companies exploiting an unbridled rise in market power—the ability to set prices higher than they could in a properly functioning competitive marketplace. Drawing on his own groundbreaking research and telling the stories of common workers throughout, he demonstrates how market power has suffocated the world of work, and how, without better mechanisms to ensure competition, it could lead to disastrous market corrections and political turmoil. The Profit Paradox describes how, over the past forty years, a handful of companies have reaped most of the rewards of technological advancements—acquiring rivals, securing huge profits, and creating brutally unequal outcomes for workers. Instead of passing on the benefits of better technologies to consumers through lower prices, these “superstar” companies leverage new technologies to charge even higher prices. The consequences are already immense, from unnecessarily high prices for virtually everything, to fewer startups that can compete, to rising inequality and stagnating wages for most workers, to severely limited social mobility. A provocative investigation into how market power hurts average working people, The Profit Paradox also offers concrete solutions for fixing the problem and restoring a healthy economy.

Free the Market!

Free the Market! PDF Author: Gary L. Reback
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9781591842460
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Book Description
"Free the Market!" traces Reback's titanic legal battles--involving top companies such as Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, and AT&T--and offers a persuasive argument for measured government intervention in the free market to foster competition.

The Capitalism Paradox

The Capitalism Paradox PDF Author: Paul H. Rubin
Publisher: Bombardier Books
ISBN: 1642931403
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
In spite of its numerous obvious failures, many presidential candidates and voters are in favor of a socialist system for the United States. Socialism is consistent with our primitive evolved preferences, but not with a modern complex economy. One reason for the desire for socialism is the misinterpretation of capitalism. The standard definition of free market capitalism is that it’s a system based on unbridled competition. But this oversimplification is incredibly misleading—capitalism exists because human beings have organically developed an elaborate system based on trust and collaboration that allows consumers, producers, distributors, financiers, and the rest of the players in the capitalist system to thrive. Paul Rubin, the world’s leading expert on cooperative capitalism, explains simply and powerfully how we should think about markets, economics, and business—making this book an indispensable tool for understanding and communicating the vast benefits the free market bestows upon societies and individuals.