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The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that scholarship is all about challenging the prevailing wisdom by offering an alternative perspective or explanation. Hopefully, the author’s journey of more than 50 years will inspire others to be eclectic and become deep generalists.

It is an autobiographical evaluation of an accidental scholar. It emphasizes that an educator is more than a scientist or a priest or a public servant. It is all of them. Educators are in the business of making ordinary people extraordinary. They are diamond cutters who are entrusted by society with its rough diamonds to get their brilliance out and make them useful to themselves, the society and the community.

Over 50 years, marketing has evolved and adapted to the external environment, including technology revolution, changing demographics, global competition and geopolitics. This provides enormous opportunity for the next generation of scholars to establish their own identity in managerial marketing, consumer behavior or marketing analytics.

While publishing in the top journals is both necessary and desirable in the early stages of an academic career, it is also important to make an impact on practitioners by publishing professional books.

According to Peter Drucker, there are only two functions of business: innovation and marketing. While innovation is admired by everyone, marketing can also become a positive force for a better world.

Lessons learnt over time from different encounters and circumstances in research, teaching and service are important to document. In the end, according to the author, they are all academic entrepreneurs.

Companies increasingly complain about a new band of “mysterious” consumers whose behavior is challenging the very foundation of modern consumer economies: materialistic aspirations. There is less interest in “things”. Designer labels are not the turn‐on like they were a few years ago. Despite significant means, many shoppers are passing up Lord & Taylor for Wal‐Mart. An especially valuable resource for these and other changes in consumer behavior that are altering the rules for successful marketplace engagement is the annals of adult development psychology. Epochal changes taking place in leading consumer behaviors owe much to the common midlife shift toward to self‐actualization.

The market-based approach to catering for the poor mainly focusses on companies making profits while helping the poor enhance their lives. This concept presented the possibility of there being a ‘fortune’ to make at the Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) market that was an opportunity for both businesses and consumers. The notion of the BoP market has been widely studied using urban and rural contexts as distinct classifications; yet many argue that the opportunity does not in fact exist in the rural BoP markets. In this chapter the authors examine the prospects in the rural BoP in Sri Lanka through a qualitative study using insights provided by industry practitioners who operate at the BoP level. Findings show that a large percentage of the income of multinational companies is derived from rural BoP markets. Compared to the urban sector, the rural BoP market indicates relatively higher disposable income and is viewed as an attractive market segment by industry practitioners. The findings also show that rural BoP people have more resources and skills than their urban counterparts, although the former commonly have lower levels of education. Moreover, the youth segment in both the urban and rural BoP markets was found to heavily consume social media. The authors conclude their discussion by providing several key proposals for organisations looking to seize opportunities in this market.

This purpose of this paper is to present an investigation into changes in portrayals of marketing by individuals outside of the industry during the important time frame between 1930 and 1999. The twentieth century was a period of significant development in how scholars and practitioners viewed the theory and activities of marketing.

The study consisted of a content analysis of 1,400 randomly selected marketing-related cartoons published in The New Yorker magazine from 1930 through 1999.

The aspects of marketing portrayed by individuals outside of the discipline, specifically cartoonists, shifted over the early/mid to later parts of the twentieth century. In particular, earlier portrayals focused primarily on retail store transactions, while later portrayals depicted an increased incidence of marketing communications taking place outside the store setting. Eventually, more portrayals also addressed the adoption of marketing ideas and vocabulary into non-marketers’ everyday lives. Overall, the proportion of portrayals that showed marketing in a negative light was low.

This study investigates changes in portrayals of marketing by non-marketers over a seven-decade period of significant development of marketing thought. Both the relatively long period and the outsiders’ perspective provide meaningful contributions. Also, findings do not support the perception that marketing and marketers are commonly viewed by those outside of marketing as unethical or likely to be in conflict with customers.

Emerging markets – marketing and business strategy; social entrepreneurship; opportunity identification; frugal innovation.

MBA; marketing management; specialis ed courses such as entrepreneurship and international marketing. Data rich case, but analytical difficulty is only moderate.

Reboot Systems was conceived as a reverse engineering/refurbishing company for used computers when Rahul Chowdhury and Subbarao came in contact with Anand Tater who had started a small business in the used computer market. The team recognised the potential of the refurbished computer market in India, which was largely unorganised with penetration of personal computers pegged at less than 5 per cent. They identified the opportunity to address the digital divide, caused by lack of affordability and accessibility, by providing inexpensive “as good as new” used computers to those who aspired to own a computer. Additionally, in extending the life of used computers on a large-scale through “frugal innovation”, they hoped to reduce the extent of e-waste generated in the economy. This case provides a rich description of an emerging market characterised by market heterogeneity, social-political governance with poor policy measures, unorganised markets, chronic shortage of resources and inadequate infrastructure. Entrepreneurs hoping to address social issues must tackle these problems at the grass-root level and come up with improvised solutions that address the unique needs of the heterogeneous and resource constrained market. Some of Reboot Systems pressing challenges were in building a viable strategic approach to the market and ensuring scalability in a sustainable way.

An understanding of the characteristics of an emerging market from a macro (environmental) as well as micro (industry specific) perspective, an appreciation of opportunity identification and improvisation in emerging markets as well as differentiating “frugal” innovation from the idea of “Jugaad”, an understanding of the role of strategic vision and mission in accomplishing social and business objectives, an understanding of how to develop sustainability and competitive advantage from a social as well as business perspective.

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The purpose of the study is to investigate how religiosity affects these relationships in Turkey where consumption is de-stigmatized among a new economic elite with strong ties to Islamism. The literature commonly associates religion and ideology with anti-capitalism and anti-consumption. Although consumer researchers have studied both topics, examination of whether materialistic values translate into status consumption and whether religiosity has an effect on the relationship between status consumption and consumer attitude to debt remains scant.

This paper investigates the relationship of materialism to status consumption and the mediating role of Islamic religiosity on the relationship between status consumption and attitude to debt. Structural equations modeling was used on a judgmental sample of 267.

The results showed that the materialistic values positively affect status consumption for the Islamists. This paper concludes that Islamic religiosity, not only does not reject consumption but also augments the relationship between status consumption and consumer attitude to debt.

The findings have shown that previous studies that identify Islam as a threat to consumerism have overseen the class struggles and the role of status consumption. This paper successfully provided empirical evidence that the religiosity not only does not reject consuming but intensifies the relationship between status consumption and attitude to debt for those with Islamist dispositions.

As uncertainty increases, business strategies need more frequent adjustments which in turn requires leaders who excel at timely external and internal alignment. We describe six challenges such leaders need to master.

The six leadership abilities profiled in this article are based on a conceptual model that was pre-tested with selected executives. Using factor analysis and other standard tests of validity, we refined an assessment questionnaire and identified remedies. It has been taken by some 30,000 managers from diverse companies around the world.

Our main findings are that strategic leadership can be deconstructed into more basic elements and that leaders can learn to better practice its skills, habits and attitudes once they know where they are personally weakest. Various challenges complicate better integration of strategy and leadership in the heat of battle but successful leaders conquer these by honing six essential capabilities. These are the ability to anticipate, challenge, interpret, decide, align and learn. We illustrate each with examples and then provide practical advice for leaders wishing to increase their strategic acumen.

Readers can complete a 12-item assessment online (www.decisionstrat.com).

The skills that comprise strategic leadership in a world of increasing uncertainty should be viewed as a self-reinforcing system. The leadership challenge, which involves practicing six abilities while overcoming barriers to them, allows the best innovators to win the long game while making frequent tactical adjustments along the way in response to surprise and uncertainty.