The Business of Aspiration is about how consumers' shifting status symbols affect business and brand strategy. These changing status symbols, like taste, aesthetic innovation, curation or environmentalism create the modern aspirational economy. In the traditional economy, consumers signaled their status through collecting commodities, Instagram followers, airline miles, and busy back-to-back schedules. By contrast, in the aspirational economy, consumers increasingly convey status through collecting knowledge, taste, micro-communities, and influence. This new capital changes the way businesses and entire markets operate, and yet the modern aspirational economy is still an under-explored area in business and culture. The Business of Aspiration changes that. In this book, marketers will find examples, analyses and tools on how brands can successfully grow in the modern aspirational economy. The Business of Aspiration answers questions like, "what is good for my brand long-term?", "how is this business decision going to impact our culture?" or "what are the main objectives of our growth?" Marketers will learn to shift their brand narrative and competitive strategy, to create and distribute new brand symbols, and to ensure that their brand’s products and services create both monetary and social value.

Not long ago, wearing real fur was a signal of wealth and status. Now, it's a signal of ignorance. Thanks to luxury rental and resale services, these days anyone can walk around in a Gucci belt. But not everyone knows that Rimowa dropped a new suitcase or who made their food and clothes. Wokeness is a modern class distinction. For the longest time, brands have operated according to the Veblen logic that status is linked to wealth and desirability to price. Now they have the opportunity to flip the script of aspiration and link worth and values to their success. Aimed at marketers, entrepreneurs, and advertising professionals, this book is full of analysis, examples, and tools of how to use the modern aspiration economy to shift a brand narrative and competitive strategy, create and distribute brand symbols, and ensure that a brand's products and services create both monetary and moral value.

Becoming someone is a learning process; and what we learn is the new values around which, if we succeed, our lives will come to turn. Agents transform themselves in the process of, for example, becoming parents, embarking on careers, or acquiring a passion for music or politics. How can such activity be rational, if the reason for engaging in the relevant pursuit is only available to the person one will become? How is it psychologically possible to feel the attraction of a form of concern that is not yet one's own? How can the work done to arrive at the finish line be ascribed to one who doesn't (really) know what one is doing, or why one is doing it? In Aspiration, Agnes Callard asserts that these questions belong to the theory of aspiration. Aspirants are motivated by proleptic reasons, acknowledged defective versions of the reasons they expect to eventually grasp. The psychology of such a transformation is marked by intrinsic conflict between their old point of view on value and the one they are trying to acquire. They cannot adjudicate this conflict by deliberating or choosing or deciding-rather, they resolve it by working to see the world in a new way. This work has a teleological structure: by modeling oneself on the person he or she is trying to be, the aspirant brings that person into being. Because it is open to us to engage in an activity of self-creation, we are responsible for having become the kinds of people we are.

In 1960, the GDP per capita of Southeast Asian countries was nearly half of that of Africa. By 1986 the gap had closed and today the trend is reversed, with more than half of the world's poorest now living in sub Saharan Africa. Why has Asia developed while Africa lagged? The Asian Aspiration chronicles the stories of explosive growth and changing fortunes: the leaders, events and policy choices that lifted a billion people out of abject poverty within a single generation, the largest such shift in human history. The relevance of Asia's example comes as Africa is facing a population boom, which can either lead to crisis or prosperity, and as Asia is again transforming, this time out of low-cost manufacturing into hi-tech, leaving a void that is Africa's for the taking. Far from the optimistic determinism of Africa Rising, this book calls for unprecedented pragmatism in the pursuit of African success.

The Book of Aspiration is a collection of memoirs of ten carefully selected social leaders. Apoorva Oza, Farhad Merchant, Geeta Goel, Noorjehan Safia Niaz, Pankaj Ballabh, Pavithra YS, Rajeshwari Narendran, Ravi Sreedharan, Suresh Reddy and Vivek Prakash had the passion to do something meaningful in their lives. In their autobiographical accounts, they mention influence of their parents, friends and spouses, and effects of various forces beyond their control, fortuitous coincidences, mentors, etc. Yet, reaching where they have reached is a result of several conscious choices they made on the way. Their stories will inspire young Indians to do something about their surroundings and guide them in creating a future they desire for themselves.

Explains how companies must pinpoint business strategies to a few critically important choices, identifying common blunders while outlining simple exercises and questions that can guide day-to-day and long-term decisions.

Part-memoir, part-history, The Business of Books is an irascible, acute and often passionate account of the collapsing standards of contemporary book publishing. It has appeared throughout the world in seventeen different editions. Book jacket.