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.

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.

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.

Nearly four decades ago, Dilip Hiro's Inside India Today, banned by Indira Gandhi's government, was acclaimed by The Guardian as simply “the best book on India.” Now Hiro returns to his native country to chronicle the impact of the dramatic economic liberalization that began in 1991, which ushered India into the era of globalization. Hiro describes how India has been reengineered not only in its economy but also in its politics and cultural mores. Places such as Gurgaon and Noida on the outskirts of Delhi have been transformed from nondescript towns into forests of expensive high-rise residential and commercial properties. Businessmen in Bollywood movies, once portrayed as villains, are now often the heroes. The marginal, right-wing Hindu militants of the past now rule the nominally secular nation, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi as their avatar, one whose electoral victory was funded by big business. Hiro provides a gripping account of the role played by Indians who have settled in the United States and Britain since 1991 in boosting India's GDP. But he also highlights the negatives: the exponential growth in sleaze in the public and private sectors, the impoverishment of farmers, and the rise in urban slums. A masterful panorama, The Age of Aspiration covers the whole social spectrum of Indians at home and abroad.

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.

Commoditisation is the gravitational force pulling competing products and services down to the same level, until price determines which company wins and loses customers. "Beyond Price" will teach readers how to innovate their business models to escape the gravity of commoditisation and price-driven competition. Business leaders will find immediate value in this systematic guide to transforming a company from one-of-many to one-of-a-kind, a company whose offerings competitors will find hard to copy and customers will feel excited to discover. A strategically differentiated business model, executed effectively, will create: Customers willing to pay a premium for a product; Long-term relationships with customers and suppliers; A collaborative environment focused on shared goals of where and how to win business; Faster decisions about how and when to pursue opportunities; Better resource leveraging through clear direction and focus. A well-defined roadmap to building a thriving business, "Beyond Price" identifies and integrates all the areas of change, beyond strategy, leaders must address to break out of and stay out of commodity competition.