The Deviant's Advantage: How Fringe Ideas Create Mass Markets

Consultants (and ""futurists"") Mathews and Wacker present a book about cashing in on weird ideas. Defining deviance as ""something or someone operating in a defined measure away from the norm,"" the authors examine the transformation that takes fringe ideas-such as jazz, holistic medicine, and even personal computing-into mass markets. They use examples such as Virgin mogul Richard Branson (whom they call a ""poster boy"" for deviance, because of his notion that everyday people should be able to have a lifestyle that would normally be closed to them) to show the process of taking a peripheral idea mainstream and applying it to one's business, even addressing the inevitable occurrence of the once-fringe idea becoming cliche. Although laden with trendy made-up words, e.g., ""devox"" and ""prescreen,"" Mathews's and Wacker's intriguing book is a fun mix of business savvy and social commentary that will surely appeal to the Fast Company crowd.