Clever Geek Handbook
16 November 2025

The Fourth Wave

Recommendation

What will the future hold for business? The Fourth Wave attempts to answer this question by looking far out to the horizon of knowable things. Expanding on Toffler’s Third Wave, The Fourth Wave analyzes trends that will shape the nature of business in the 21st century. At the forefront of this trend analysis is the consideration of global consciousness, ecology, environmental integrity and economics. The book is written from an academic perspective, so it is not an easy read, but the authors must have sensed this shortcoming, because they use charts to effectively summarize the information presented in the chapters. BooksInShort recommends this book to anyone who wants a fresh perspective on the role business might play in the future, and perhaps should play today. Executives, change leaders and students will find this book useful and thought provoking.

Take-Aways

  • The Fourth Wave of change anticipates the next business era.
  • Business will act as the leading force in the Fourth Wave.
  • Environmental concern is a touchstone of the Fourth Wave.
  • Community is the organizational basis of the Fourth Wave.
  • Growth in global consciousness is a trend that accelerates acceptance of the Fourth Wave.
  • Appropriate technologies are those technologies that take into consideration community values.
  • Ecology and economics will merge in the Fourth Wave.
  • All politics will have an environmental aspect in the Fourth Wave.
  • There are seven trends associated with the Fourth Wave.
  • Fourth-Wave companies will tend to the well of being of their communities.

Summary

The Emerging Fourth Wave

The challenges facing the world today require a shift in mindset from focusing on crises to anticipating the future. Business is in the best position to lead this shift. Two assumptions underlie this conclusion. First, business is the most powerful institution of our society and the major force affecting world conditions. Second, corporations will survive in the future only if they undergo a major shift to address individual and societal needs. There are seven trends that hallmark the change facing businesses in the future. They are:

  1. Shift in consciousness - Increasing numbers of people believe that personal consciousness is primary.
  2. Disenchantment with scientism - The growing dislike of the scientific reduction of all reality and experience to mathematical descriptions.
  3. Creation of inner sources of authority and power - The expanding use of unconscious knowing to process experience that cannot be explained or measured.
  4. Re-spiritualization of society - More people are deriving meaning and purpose from inner sources.
  5. Decline of materialism - The shift of personal and corporate values from competition to cooperation.
  6. Political and economic democratization - Oppressed peoples are demanding democratization.
  7. Move beyond nationality - The world is evolving into a civilization without nationality. Bioregionalism refers to regional world groupings being formed on the basis of ecological unified areas.

Change Theory

These seven trends form a basis for envisioning the future. They are, in effect, the hallmarks of the Fourth Wave of change, a concept that owes much to the intellectual contributions that Alvin Toffler made to change theory. According to Toffler, the First Wave of change was the agricultural revolution, when communities organized around the domestication of crops. The Second Wave of change, which coincided with the industrial revolution, is rooted in materialism and the supremacy of man; it is ongoing throughout the world. The Third Wave of change is a force in industrialized nations and is reflected in the calls for balance and sustainability in those societies. The Fourth Wave of change is still off in the distance. This emerging wave is based upon integration of all dimensions of life into a unified whole. It recognizes the identity of all living systems including the earth itself.

Worldviews

Each active wave of change has a distinctive worldview. The worldview of the Second Wave is, "We are separate and we must compete." The worldview of the Third Wave is, "We are connected and must cooperate." The worldview of the Fourth Wave will be, "We are one and choose to co-create."

“In the future, the close integration of corporate work and family life will be crucial to the success of the corporation.”

Most corporations today are still stuck in the Second Wave. The corporation as the creator of value drives the transition from Second to Third Wave. The difference can be seen in how a corporation frames its strategic questions. Instead of asking, "How do we make money?" Third Wave corporations ask, "How are we creating value?" Instead of asking, "Are we beating the competition?" Third Wave corporations ask, "Do we understand the need?" Finally, instead of asking, "Are we gaining market share?" Third Wave corporations ask, "Are we providing the right kind of service?" The Fourth Wave corporation of the future will recognize its role "as one of stewardship for the whole, in addition to providing goods and services to a particular customer base." A Fourth Wave corporate image will be that of a serving organization rather than a manufacturing organization.

Fourth Wave Change

Corporations will experience other changes with the onset of the Fourth Wave, including:

  • Redefinition of corporate wealth - New techniques of social accounting will define the type of wealth created by corporations in the future. These techniques will include universalization of capital ownership, internalization of the social and environmental costs of doing business and capitalization of natural resources.
  • Evolution of corporate structure - Corporate structure will move from a matrix model or business unit structure to a community model.
  • Shift from corporation to community - Companies no longer will be external entities in a local community. Instead, the corporation will take care of the overall health and well being of its family members.
  • Merging of ecology and economics - The movement toward a common cause of ecology and economics will see a shift beyond conservation to deep ecology. Economic justice and sustainability will be the key themes of this deep ecology, which in turn will reflect the growing awareness of a global consciousness.
  • Use of appropriate technology - Changing views of technology reflects two cultural trends: The movement away from scientism and the movement toward laws of ecology that foster sustainability and environmental integrity.
  • Blurring of leadership - Leadership in the era of bio-politics will reflect the blurring of private and public distinctions, because private values in the future will have to align with public welfare concerns.

Business of the Future

Based upon the trends encapsulated in the Fourth Wave of change, 21st century business will:

  • Act as an exemplar for other institutions in society.
  • Act locally as a global citizen.
  • Be an advocate of the living economy.
  • Practice social and resource accounting.
  • Be an organization committed to serve its community.
  • Act as model of environmental concern.
  • Be a pioneer in using appropriate technologies.
  • Be led by bio-politicians.

Global Stewards

The emerging Fourth Wave will create new roles for business. Under the Second Wave, the role of business was to maximize profits, and under the Third Wave, the role of business has been to create value. The Fourth Wave role will be global stewardship. Acting as a global steward will permit business to merge public and private responsibility as the basic provider of wealth and stability. The first area to witness this Fourth Wave role is our physical environment and ecosystems. Corporations have started to acknowledge the need for Fourth Wave sustainability through the creation of the Business Council for Sustainable Development. Other business leaders are making the call to identify planetary needs and corporate solutions.

Fourth-Wave Wealth

The emerging Fourth Wave will create new definitions for corporate wealth. Under the Second Wave, corporate wealth was defined as balance-sheet tangible assets. Under the third wave, the definition of corporate wealth has been expanded to include intangible assets. Corporate wealth in the Fourth Wave will expand even further to include social performance. As businesses assume the role of corporate stewards, the means of evaluating performance will reflect the ability of those stewards to accomplish societal good. To effectively measure corporate social performance, accounting standards will need to include social accounting concepts to determine the complete social costs of production and protection.

Community Structure

The emerging Fourth Wave will see corporate structure evolve. Second-Wave corporate structure was hierarchy, matrix or business unit. Third-Wave corporate structure has been team value. Corporate structure in the Fourth Wave will be community. The community model will be the driving corporate structure because the needs of the individual to belong and make a difference in the world can be realized only through a community structure. The community model will incorporate many qualities of team-value structure - it will be democratic and participatory - but it also will include the community values of co-creation, equality and flexibility.

“Individual business corporations will survive only if they undergo a major shift to address individual and societal needs and become more democratic in their processes.”

The corporation as community will be an environment in which everyone’s life is touched, unified and fully open to one another. People will be able to be the same at work as they are at home, which will lead to the end of structural violence and the promotion of the wellness workplace.

Eco-economics

The emerging Fourth Wave will witness the movement toward the common cause of ecology and economics. The Second Wave environmental perspective was based on consumption. The Third Wave environmental perspective has been sustainability. The Fourth Wave environmental perspective, the merger of ecology and economics, will be preservation. This preservation perspective will be based upon the following principles:

  1. The growth of natural systems is finite. In a global ecosystem, unlimited growth leads toward disaster. Economic theories that support unlimited growth are unrealistic and environmentally dangerous.
  2. Everything must go somewhere. The environment’s ability to absorb solid waste has been exhausted. We need to discourage the belief that consumption drives business growth.
  3. Competition discourages diversity. When competing species rely on the same limiting resource, coexistence is not possible; one species will win out over time.
  4. The law of the retarding lead. The dominant species is slow to respond to change, so change might not come from known entities. Small, start-up corporations are the source of change, inventions and new techniques that permit long-term viability.
  5. Everything is connected to everything else. Ecosystems operate under the same theory of the common ownership that leads humans to destroy public property because no one takes responsibility for the well being of public property.

The Four Rs of Ecology

The Fourth Wave perspective will recognize the "4 Rs" of ecological wisdom: repair, recondition, reuse and recycle. The Fourth Wave will reward businesses that shift from consumption of finite resources or creation of heavy pollution. Businesses that ride the wave of ecology and economics, pollution control, recycling and resource substitution, energy efficiency, and ecologically tailored energy supply will flourish in the 21st century.

Leaders of the Fourth Wave

The Fourth Wave will require corporate leadership that understands bio-politics. Under the Second Wave, corporate leadership came from the business leader. Third Wave corporate leadership has been a participant in dialogues on societal and global welfare. The Fourth Wave will see corporate leaders acting as global leaders and bio-politicians. Bio-politics will be measured by the power to produce change in ecosystems as well as in corporate headquarters, city hall, or Washington. Bio-politicians will adhere to morality and community values in acquiring and wielding power in the era of bio-politics. All business activities in the 21st century will have an environmental implication.

“Thinking globally recognizes that the earth is one.”

Fourth-Wave bio-political leaders will exhibit personal maturity as a prime trait. This level of maturity will permit these leaders to be self-aware of "personal scripts," or unconscious programming in their decision-making processes. Bio-politicians will also stand as moral leaders for the businesses they represent and the community at large. They will see their morality as a component of their ability to influence public dialogue. They will be the creators of global political order.

About the Authors

Herman Bryant Maynard, Jr., is an international consultant on personal and organizational transformation and serves on the board of directors for the World Business Academy, the World Trust, and the International Center for Organizational Design. Susan E. Mehrtens is president of Potlach Group, Inc., a research organization specializing in the analysis of business trends related to global evolution and social change. She is the co-author of an ecology text, Earthkeeping , the editor of Revisioning Science , a festschrift dedicated to Willis W. Harman, and co-author of What’s Going On?

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The Fourth Wave

Book The Fourth Wave

Business in the 21st Century

Berrett-Koehler,
 


16 November 2025

Wall Street People

Recommendation

Writing with James R. Vertin, author Charles D. Ellis presents brief profiles of 85 Wall Street leaders who contributed to the growth of the world’s major financial marketplace. The authors divide these individuals – all men, which tells a tale right there – into four slightly arbitrary groups: masters of investing, movers and shakers, business builders, and wisemen and rascals. The collection is drawn from the other writers’ pieces about these men, and includes occasional articles the featured financiers wrote themselves. Apart from a few brief notes about some patterns that the author observed, these excerpts from various sources stand alone, with no overarching theme or exposition. BooksInShort keenly feels the lack of a few analytical essays that might have pulled the collection together and integrated it thematically, but even so, this serves as a useful research tool and an interesting introduction to a unique confluence of powerful men.

Take-Aways

  • Fame is fleeting - most famous or infamous Wall Streeters will be forgotten.
  • Many important Wall Street players are not well known, since celebrity doesn’t match significance.
  • Sometimes those who break the rules become nationally notorious.
  • Some prominent Wall Streeters became famous for philanthropy, such as David Rockefeller and John Templeton, or for public service, such as Bernard M. Baruch and Benno Schmidt.
  • Those who built Wall Street can be categorized as master investors, major movers and shakers, business builders or wisemen and rascals.
  • Master investor Benjamin Graham influenced many investors, including Warren Buffett.
  • Charles Allen Jr. began with nothing and built one of Wall Street’s wealthiest firms.
  • Laurence and Preston Tisch made a fortune buying and managing businesses.
  • Wisemen include Federal Reserve chairmen William McChesney Martin Jr., Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan.
  • Rascal Ivan F. Boesky was a stock wheeler-dealer who went to jail for his dealings.

Summary

The Men Who Built Wall Street

Some 85 men played a central role in transforming Wall Street, a narrow street in lower Manhattan, into a cultural icon and the global center of finance. As you consider their lives and the impact that these individuals had on Wall Street’s development, a few noteworthy patterns emerge:

  • Fame is fleeting - Most of these men will be forgotten by the time another portrait of Wall Street is created in the next century.
  • Celebrity does not match significance - Many of the most important contributors went relatively unrecognized, while several minor players became much better known.
  • Those who misbehave receive the most notoriety - Many thousands who are conscientious and effective labor in relative anonymity.
“Don’t speculate unless you can make it a full-time job. Don’t buy too many securities. Better have only a few investments which can be watched.” [Bernard M. Baruch]

A host of fascinating people helped make Wall Street the world’s preeminent financial market, but the following men stand above the rest for their contributions.

The Masters of Investing

The investment masters catalogued are known for these landmark activities:

  • Bernard M. Baruch made a substantial fortune and a national reputation. He served as an informal counselor to powerful leaders, such as Winston Churchill. In My Own Story he counsels, don’t "try to be a jack of all investments. Stick to the field you know best."
  • After an academic career, Albert J. Hettinger Jr. made a fortune as an analyst and insurance industry expert at Lazard Freres, where he worked well into his 80s.
  • Roy Neuberger was a leading investor for 50 years. In 1944, the Museum of Modern Art cited the art he gathered as the country’s most interesting contemporary art collection.
  • Benjamin Graham was a very influential guru for many investors, including Warren Buffett. He taught at Columbia and is known for his books, including The Intelligent Investor and Security Analysis. He emphasized a mathematics-based value approach.
  • David L. Babson is a growth-oriented investor whose fund ranked fifth in 1969 among funds with assets of more than $10 million. He looks for potential growth by finding an industry that is growing faster than the economy and seeking leaders in that industry.
  • Philip Fisher is the most famous of the older generation of investment counselors in San Francisco. He was one of the first counselors to claim that growth stocks had characteristics that distinguished them from ordinary stocks. He believes that you can make a lot of money by investing in an outstanding company and holding it for years.
  • Charles Allen Jr. began Allen & Company with no capital, connections or backers and turned it into one of the wealthiest firms on Wall Street. He combines investment banking with a risk thrust, emphasizing buying and controlling companies, investing in securities for the company, underwriting and some trading for certain customers.
  • John Hay Whitney built J.H. Whitney & Company, the first true venture capital firm. He was a philanthropist, noted art collector and publisher of the New York Herald Tribune.
  • Benno Schmidt, who worked with Whitney, led the first investment firm devoted to venture capital and helped lead in America’s war on cancer.
  • Fayez Sarofim was born in Egypt, but became a leading money manager and investor in Texas for more than 40 years. He built Houston’s leading investment firm by focusing on consistent performance rather than short-term plays.
  • Starting from humble beginnings, Michael Steinhardt started Steinhardt, Fine & Berkowitz in 1969, and built it from $7.7 million to $30 million in capital in two years.
  • Laurence A. Tisch and his brother, Preston Robert (Bob) Tisch, built a family fortune of more than $2 billion by buying businesses and actively managing them. Their businesses include or have included CBS, the Loews theater chain and Loews Hotels.
“Warren Buffett credits his father, Howard Buffett, a stockbroker and onetime congressman, with setting an example of how to behave. He credits (Ben) Graham with giving him an ’intellectual framework for investing’ and a temperamental model.” [Robert Lezner]

Other masters of investing include:

  • Warrant Buffett, America’s wealthiest individual as of 1993, built his fortune investing through Berkshire Hathaway. He emphasizes long-term value investing.
  • Charles T. Munger has been vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway since 1975.
  • Jack Dreyfus, the creator of one of the first mutual fund companies, Dreyfus & Company, gained a reputation for predicting stock market dips and rises.
  • Howard Stein is the money manager who built Dreyfus into one of America’s largest money-management companies.
  • John Templeton, an international investor from Britain, earned a billion-dollar fortune and was knighted in 1986 for philanthropy, including funding Templeton College at Oxford.
  • Paul Miller founded a new, unregistered investment-management boutique, Miller, Anderson & Sherrerd, which became one of the field’s leading firms. Morgan Stanley bought the firm in the 1990s for $350 million.
  • Claude Rosenberg founded RCM Capital Management, which manages $12 billion for 94 of the nation’s blue-chip corporations, public funds and university endowments. He wrote five books including, Wealthy and Wise.
“Charlie Allen began Allen & Co. with no capital, no connections and no backers. Not so many years later, it was one of the richest firms on Wall Street, still innovating, still private, and still effective.” [Robert Sheehan]

Other master investors profiled include Robert Kirby, Dean LeBaron, Peter Lynch, John B. Neff, Leon Levy, Jack Nash, Barton Biggs, Julian Robertson, George Soros and Philip Carrett.

Movers and Shakers

The major movers and shakers on Wall Street include:

  • Saul P. Steinberg is most remembered as the chairman of Leasco Data Processing, a debt-free holding company that made a takeover threat against Chemical Bank.
  • William Zeckendorf, a famed 1950s real-estate financier, once engineered a million-dollar deal without any money. He offered a store a 30-year lease and used the leased property as collateral to borrow $1 million from the bank at 4%.
  • Roland Rowland, a British subject, amassed a fortune by building Lonro into a global commercial empire employing more than 100,000 people in the late 1980s.
  • James Goldsmith, a citizen of both Britain and France, pursued and financed corporate takeovers. He bought and broke up troubled, older companies that sold for below their break-up value. He sold off parts and created streamlined, profitable core companies.
  • Carl Icahn built a nearly $1 billion fortune in the 1980s by investing in and sometimes taking over undervalued companies. By the early 1990s, his company, Icahn Enterprises included securities brokerage, rail car leasing, real estate and even thoroughbred breeding.
  • Canadians Albert and Paul Reichmann built a fortune in real estate. They joined the major leagues with a big deal, the 1977 purchase of eight of New York’s largest office buildings for $50 million down - now worth more than $1.5 billion.
  • Bruce Wassertstein was known for his aggressive approach as an acquisitions advisor, making him prominent during the 1980s merger-and-acquisition boom.
“In creating Dreyfus & Company, (Jack Dreyfus) contributed importantly to the development of mutual funds, created a great brand and logo, and was one of the first to play the money game.” [Marshall Smith]

Other Wall Street movers and shakers cited include: Scarsdale Fats, an institutional investor; Alfred W. Jones, possibly the inventor of the hedge fund; Gerald Tsia, founder of the Manhattan Fund; Fred Alger, a noted 1960s fund manager and Jerry Kohlberg, Henry Kravis, and George Roberts, of KKR, whose firm dominated acquisitions in the 1980s.

Business Builders

The innovators cited here are known for these achievements:

  • Longstreet Hilton headed Morgan Bank’s Trust Department.
  • Herman J. Abs was an influential advisor to Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in Germany.
  • George S. Moore worked at Citibank and contributed to its post-WW II development.
  • David Rockefeller, who was an investor and world traveler, was involved with many organizations devoted to social, artistic and international purposes.
  • George S. Johnson guided investment counselors Scudder, Stevens and Clark.
  • Jonathan Bell Lovelace, an entrepreneur, founded and financed the Capital Group Companies, which his son guided to world leadership in investment management.
  • Arnold Berhand, a pioneer in applying statistics to finance, invented Value Line, the best-known information source for investors.
  • Edward C. Johnson II pioneered a new approach to mutual fund investing, using Fidelity Management to turn mutual funds from savings vehicles into investment vehicles.
  • Edward C. Johnson III expanded Fidelity into one of the most innovative financial services companies in the world.
  • Siegmund Warburg led the development of Eurobonds, introduced aggressive merger and acquisition methods to the United Kingdom, and built S.G. Warburg & Company.
  • Maurice (Hank) Greenberg took control of the American International Group and made it one of the insurance industry’s most powerful companies.
  • Sanford Weill began his career as an entrepreneur-manager at the brokerage firm of Carter, Berlind, Weill and Levitt in the 1960s. Through acquisitions and managerial prowess, he built it into a major firm, sold it to American Express and formed Citigroup.
  • William Salomon joined his father’s firm, Salomon Brothers, ran it for 20 years and helped turn it into a financial powerhouse.
“Saul Steinberg will probably be most remembered as the boy wonder chairman of Leasco Data Processing and for his breath-taking takeover threat against Chemical Bank.” [Chris Welles]

Other business builders profiled include: John C. Bogel, Joseph K. Klingenstein, T.J. Carlyle Gifford, Henry Grunfeld, David Scholey, James D. Wolfensohn, Henry Crown, Albert H. Gordon, John L. Loeb, Gustave Levy, John C. Whitehead, John L. Weinberg, Robert H. B. Baldwin, Alan C. (Ace) Greenberg, Pete Peterson, Lewis Glucksman, Donald Regan, Michael David-Weill, John Gutfreund, John Meriwether, Michael Bloomberg, and Richard H. Jenrette.

Wisemen and Rascals

The sages and scalawags highlighted are lauded or lambasted for these accomplishments:

  • Sidney Homer, the son of Louise Homer, one of the earliest great opera singers, led the revolution in the valuation of fixed-income instruments. He established Salomon Brothers as a large, respected organization involved in financial research in the 1960s.
  • Henry Kaufman was chief economist and senior partner at Salomon Brothers before starting his own firm. An expert forecaster, he looks at the economic side through financial eyes.
  • John J. McCloy led Chase Manhattan Bank, then called Chase National.
  • After William McChesney Martin Jr. served as the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange and head of the Import-Export Bank. He was appointed to head the Federal Reserve Board in 1955.
  • Paul Volcker, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, defeated inflation in the late ’70s.
  • Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Fed after Volcker, is a shrewd political operator who kept inflation low. He is the present Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.
  • Ivan F. Boesky, a stock wheeler and dealer, went to jail for security law violations.
  • Martin Siegel was a senior executive of Kidder Peabody when he broke the securities laws, enriching himself and Ivan Boesky, before he was also prosecuted.
“Arnold Bernhard, a pioneer in the application of statistics in finance, invented Value Line and made it the best known information service available to investors.” [Vartanig G. Vartan]

The other men profiled in this group include Gary Lynch, Dennis B. Levine, Michael Milken, Robert Maxwell and Nicholas Leeson.

About the Authors

Charles D. Ellis was a managing partner of Greenwich Associates for 28 years. He taught courses in investment management at Harvard Business School and Yale School of Management; served as a trustee on the investment committees of Phillips Exeter Academy, Yale University and the Whitehead Institute, and was chairman of the Association for Investment Management and Research (AIMR). James R. Vertin was the founding manager and chief investment officer of Wells Fargo Investment Advisors, which grew to become Barclays Global Investors, one of the world’s largest investment firms.

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Wall Street People

Book Wall Street People

True Stories of Today's Masters and Moguls

Wiley,
 


16 November 2025

Selling Dreams

Recommendation

Gian Luigi Longinotti-Buitoni’s premise is that the best way to sell products is to tap into customers’ emotional impulses, which can override their rational thinking. It’s a good theory, as proven by how effectively the CEO of Ferrari North America used it in writing this book. As a reader, you can’t help but get swept up in the pages of description of wondrous products from the likes of Ferrari, Tiffany, the Ritz and Cohiba. And when you do, it’s easy to overlook the fact that the book is slightly repetitive and presents ideas that are far from radical. However, Longinotti-Buitoni’s anecdotes about the development of the Ferrari brand name, as well as those of other high-end companies, are sure to delight marketing and advertising practitioners. BooksInShort.com recommends this book to professionals in those fields, who will find useful insights, especially in the excellent summaries that come toward the end of each chapter. A clear introduction and a well-executed concluding chapter also help clarify the ideas. There is probably more passion than substance to Selling Dreams, but in the end, isn’t that what it’s all about?

Take-Aways

  • Sell products and services that appeal to your customers’ dreams.
  • To appeal to your customers’ dreams, you must interpret the spirit of our times.
  • Establishing your brand is a critical part of developing a dream product or service.
  • When a customer buys a dream product or service, he buys more than just the product or service; he buys an experience.
  • The term "marketer" is too narrowly defined for a dream-selling company. "Dreamketers" are needed in the dream-selling business.
  • A dreamketer takes into account all of the motivations that cause a customer to buy.
  • Differentiate between consumers and customers.
  • Customers are more faithful than consumers are, and they spend more money.
  • An obsession with short-term financial goals can inhibit progress.
  • Risk-taking and a long-term financial view are necessary for a company to become successful at selling dreams.

Summary

Shaping Dreams

To please the new breed of customer, you must trigger their emotional impulses, which override their rational thinking. Companies must sell products and services that appeal to the dreams of their customers. You cannot rely on market analysis, consumer studies or product clinics alone. You need to be able to interpret the spirit of our time.

The Volkswagen Beetle is an excellent example of a product that succeeded because it appealed to the spirit of the times. Introduced during the "flower-power" generation, the Beetle capitalized on society’s love of the underdog. The Sony Walkman was successful because it appealed to baby-boomers’ desire for freedom and independence.

“Customers do not buy a Ferrari or a Feadship yacht simply to get around in, a Chanel dress because they are cold, or a room at the Ritz because they are just looking for a good night’s sleep. These companies sell dreams.”

The idea of interpreting the spirit of our time may seem like a job better suited to artists and writers. In reality, a company should have an advantage over any individual artist or writer. While most artists and writers work alone, companies can draw on a vast range of collaborators to produce creative ideas. In addition, while companies are concerned only with creating wealth, writers and artists must wrestle with complex spiritual and cultural motivations. Influencing a customer’s material dreams is easier than defining the artistic and poetic vision of a civilization.

The Business of Selling Dreams

In order to secure business success, your company needs to establish its brand. Fame is critical because it translates into name recognition, customer awareness, sales and profits. Take a minute to look at how the following companies have turned dream selling into a profitable business.

  • Ferragamo - This company has turned selling shoes into an art. Actors, actresses, royalty, industrialists and politicians make up the faithful but demanding Ferragamo clientele.
  • Ferrari - This racing and sports automobile manufacturer is one of the three most recognized brands in the world (along with Coca-Cola and IBM). This was achieved despite the fact the company didn’t even have an advertising budget until 1993. For a few million dollars spent improving name recognition, Ferrari has achieved an effect similar to the one IBM and Coca-Cola spent billions to create.
  • The Hôtel Ritz - While the name Ritz appears on many of the world’s hotels, only the Hôtel Ritz in Place Vendôme, Paris, provides the magnificence that spurred the opening of so many grand hotels at the turn of the century. Opened in 1898, the Ritz was one of the first hotels that offered electricity and fully equipped bathrooms in each room. Ritz employees, as many as two to a guest, are refined and polished. Some employees have been with the company for more than 20 years.
“Create products and services designed and engineered to convey intense emotions.”

So, what do these companies have in common? While their products (shoes, cars, and hotels) are different, they share the same common purpose: They fulfill the dreams of their customers. Ferragamo sells the dream of elegance, not shoes. Ferrari sells the dream of speed, not cars. The Ritz offers a palace of splendor and refinement, not just hotel rooms. They are dream products because their success does not come solely from the function of the products; it depends on how they emotionally engage the customer.

It is time to view your company horizontally. This means changing your focus from your company and products to the customer. From a vertical (or product) perspective, Rolls-Royce is seen as having something in common with Toyota, because both companies produce cars. But if you look at Rolls-Royce from a horizontal (customer) perspective, you see more in common with companies like Ferragamo or the Ritz. By thinking of your company with a horizontal perspective, you are better tuned in to your customers’ purchasing habits. For example, the owner of a Rolls-Royce is more likely to purchase from Ferragamo than from JC Penney.

“A company is truly only worth the sum of its customers’ spending power.”

Dream products and services normally start out as products or services that have aesthetic value for their design, technology, or cultural impact. Ferrari is a dream car because of the way it was conceived, designed, and produced. Marketing completes the dream experience. A Hyundai is a functional commuter car. No amount of advertising can transform the Hyundai into a dream product. To sell dreams, companies must produce products and services that are strikingly attractive, original, socially desirable, and exceptionally well crafted.

Dreamketing

Merely reaching the market is no longer enough. Be a "dreamketer," instead of a marketer. Dreamketing is based on the fact that, to achieve blockbuster success, you have to be able to interpret and shape your customers’ strongest desires. Your product is not a dream, but it can be the inspiration for a dream. A crown may inspire a person to wish to be a king. The dream is to become king, not to own a crown. The dreamketer is responsible for arousing the dream state of their customers.

“Companies must promote in their customers’ wonderment, feelings of extreme well being and the conviction that they, too, can be freed from the daily grind and head for the impossible.”

A dreamketer needs to consider all of the different purchasing motivations of customers in order to build a convincing dream. A person may choose to purchase a bottle of fine wine due to a variety of motivators ranging from symbolic (establishing social status), to hedonistic (enjoying pleasure), to aesthetic (admiring the quality of the creation).

Educating consumers about aesthetic values is a tough sell. Most people are not interested in cultivating their aesthetic tastes. Despite this, communication campaigns are important. If you can help customers appreciate aesthetic excellence they will become your company’s most faithful customers. This reduces the cost of retaining customers. These customers also tend to be taste leaders who are influential when telling others of a product’s excellence.

“Interpret the spirit of the time in order to understand which dreams will capture the customer.”

Choose a dreamketing strategy that follows your product’s intended life cycle. Short-term products, such as fashion and perfumes, need aggressive marketing strategies that are constantly renewed through TV, newspapers, or magazines. A strong promotional launch based around symbolic and hedonistic motivators builds a base of customers who will attract future customers by word of mouth. Jewels, luggage, and accessories are medium-term products that require a subtler dreamketing approach. Along with hedonistic and symbolic motivators, aesthetic values must also be promoted. Long-term products, such as yachts, specialty food, wine, and furniture, require a strategy that focuses on aesthetic values and the uniqueness of the product. The use of word of mouth, special events, and specialized media are the best methods for dreamketing long-term products.

Ferragamo’s Divas

It is important to remember the real reason your customers buy your product. The dream of customers is not to own Ferragamo shoes. Customers dream of being as beautiful as Ferragamo’s divas. Producing unbelievable products is not enough. You need to urge your customers to fulfill their dreams with your product.

“The first concern of the ’dreamketer’ should be to create an evocative and seductive brand, one that can spark desire and set the customer’s mood.”

Make the distinction between customers and consumers. A consumer is a hypothetical figure that symbolizes the millions of people who buy goods for their functional worth. Once a product is used, it is discarded. There is very little relationship between the consumer and the company. A customer is a specific person with very particular tastes. Customers do not buy products merely to consume them. Temporary products such as a glass of Château Latour 1974, or a hotel stay at the Ritz, remain preserved in the memory of customers.

The difference between consumers and customers is purchasing attitude. Customers spend more than consumers and they are more faithful. You need to make a customer out of every consumer you can. Your company’s total worth is equal to the purchasing power of your customers and their willingness to use it. The best way to attract customers is to transform common products into dream products.

“A company must develop, at all levels of the organization, a culture that actively promotes original experimentation and aesthetic research.”

Look at the economic profile of your customers. At the top are the very few of the very rich. This group includes billionaires, CEOs, and sports and entertainment celebrities. While not many people earn that kind of money, their visibility fuels the expectations of other people. Media coverage of the rich and glamorous leads people to want to emulate them.

“Just as artists wander endlessly for inspiration, companies should constantly explore unrelated fields to increase their chances of understanding how their customers’ desires are formed.”

The majority of your affluent customers will have a more realistic income. In the United States, the top 25% of earners are considered affluent. This market segment represents the largest concentration of spending power, so it is very important for a company to appeal to this group.

Your company should focus less on wealth in relation to the rest of the population and more on discretionary income. Discretionary income is the term for the amount of money left after basic requirements such as food, shelter, taxes, and other necessities are taken care of. This leftover money can be spent freely on anything from education and leisure to luxury items. The best indicator of spending power toward the purchase of dream products and services is discretionary income. Other indicators to be aware of include cultural and social attitudes toward luxury or hedonistic spending, and any religious edicts that forbid the consumption of alcohol or certain foods. While it is relatively easy to measure wealth objectively (income, home value, investment value), determining the potential market for dream products and services is much more complex.

Your company cannot expect customers to be the same faithful patrons of the past. Creativity and bigger investments in research and development are needed to keep your company constantly innovating. You will have to be able to tease, amuse, and surprise. Emotional data is still more important than rational data. The acceleration speed of a motorcycle from zero to 60 miles per hour matters less than the emotion of getting on a Harley-Davidson and feeling as rebellious as Marlon Brando. People who buy Ray-Ban sunglasses are less concerned with UV protection than they are concerned with looking like the cocky fighter pilot played by Tom Cruise.

“Selling dreams is an important business, which includes all of those products and services that can stimulate our imagination and excite our desires.”

Dreamketers need to upgrade to modern technology to help them win over specific individuals. You need to know a person’s tastes, likes, dislikes, sense of humor, physical and emotional characteristics, and earning and spending potential. With that sort of information, a dreamketer can tailor-make individual dreams.

Financing Creativity

Selling dream products and services successfully requires creativity of an artistic nature. However, with art, the primary goal is to create beauty. Your focus in selling dreams is to make a business. Normally the financial department of your organization is responsible for enforcing a strict work discipline. Unfortunately, the financial department’s obsession with the bottom line could be a detriment to the long-term success of a company in the business of selling dreams. Your company’s financial directives need to allow your organization to take risks and have a long-term focus.

“Since dreaming does not refer to specific objects, but rather to the way those objects are perceived, a company sells a dream also by creating the perfect stage for its product or service.”

Putting together the expertise and credibility necessary to create dream products and services takes time. A company needs to be able to take risks and experiment with different solutions that will stir peoples’ emotions and convey the company’s original taste. It is virtually impossible to consistently create dreams without long-term thinking and risk taking. The short-term, risk-avoidance model of financial management is useless for the dream-selling company. It’s not easy to be successful selling dream products and services, but once you are, it can transform the rest of the life of the company. Consider how the Walkman has helped Sony’s worldwide brand recognition.

Selling dreams is the road to any businessman’s dream: profitability. This dream is elusive to many businessmen because once markets become saturated by intense competition, companies begin to cut prices in order to attract new customers and increase market share. Price wars will not help a dream-selling company increase sales. Mass-consumption businesses focus on the rational thinking of the consumer and try to offer the best possible deal. Dream-selling businesses must ignore the price tag and focus on their customers’ emotional behavior. High profit margins are generated by dream-selling businesses by maximizing added value. The higher your customers perceive the added value, the more they will pay.

About the Author

Gian Luigi Longinotti-Buitoni  is the president and CEO of Ferrari North America.

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Selling Dreams

Book Selling Dreams

How to Make Any Product Irresistible

Simon & Schuster,
 



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