Virginia Postrel, author of The Future and Its Enemies, and the Dynamist blog, recently wrote a piece in the Boston Globe about economic sociology. A fascinating run through a rich area of research, that I review in my most recent Centrality post.

My conclusions:

Postrel has managed to quickly highlight the trajectory of economic sociology's research direction, and provide some tantalizing examples of how this thinking is important for business.

But perhaps most important is the unstated argument: that the classical economic metaphors about markets and human interaction are being overturned. Business leaders today cannot approach their business plans based on the classical market concepts. People are not homogeneous, they are strongly influenced by who they know, and their economic decisions are framed by the social context they are embedded in. This is the core of today's bottom up marketing approaches -- like word of mouth or buzz marketing -- that rejects mass market, broadcast approaches to influencing buying behavior, and focuses on the intensely personal elements of deciding which car to buy, what clothes to wear, or what music to listen to.

Click here to read the full post at Centrality