A Review of The Dream Society Essay

It is not easy to talk about businesses and make them appeal not only to a niche market but to all people. Most often, a book that talks about business, marketing strategies, and corporate culture is believed to be complex and even boring at some point. This I believe makes Rolf Jensen’s creatively written book entitled The Dream Society: How the Coming Shift from Information to Imagination Will Transform Your Business a deviation from the complex and difficult-to-understand image of business books. The book is about the noticeable reality emerging in today’s business cycle of how the tales and stories behind the products become essential factors that help the product sell. Jensen managed, in his insightful book, to produce an enlightening analysis of today’s business culture and predict a futuristic direction for companies without losing his readers in hard-to-understand concepts and difficult-to-memorize theories. The book revolves around the idea that more than information, imagination will be the biggest selling point of the products in the future. As time progresses and as competitions among companies become tighter and more profound, people become more and more interested on the stories behind the product than just the product itself. A book that intends to explain the flow of the market is often deemed an instructional book that offers tips and suggestions. The Dream Society is very different because it focuses on the trends and phenomena that are observable in the market but are easily missed or not looked upon twice. The book has promising value because it laid down facts along with interesting trivia and anecdotes that would not normally appear in boring business books. Jensen’s work is definitely able to capture the attention of his readers as he talks about how markets today target the consumers’ emotional needs and how some successful companies like Disney, Nike, and Rolex supply these needs by utilizing whatever tales they have that appeal to people’s hearts. Jensen, a talented and knowledgeable scholar, notices how this trend had slowly become the root of huge demands from these companies and he discusses how this marketing strategy will adamantly shape the future of business and corporate culture. Classified under the â€Å"classic Dream Society logic†, these companies are just among those who are able to understand that what the market wants are stories and appeals on their emotional side (Jensen, 2001, p. 3). Companies known as the Dream Society are predictably the ones who will be able to dominate the business world in the future because they could deliver what the consumers want. The Dream Society is actually a vital piece of work that would relate to academic, sociological, and corporate issues. It revolves around the question of what really sells today. Based on the careful research of the author, it is evident that society will give more attention to the stories behind the products and would direct its consumption towards things or objects that appeal to the heart. I felt that the author wants the book to focus more on providing its readers an outward perspective of the market because it narrates in a futuristic sense, providing all the facts of today that are in line with a potential market. The author iss able to achieve this through subtle narrations of personal experiences, analysis on how markets transform and direct attributions to organizations that make use of the consumers’ needs for emotional satisfaction. I noticed that even when the author is speaking in the first person perspective, he never lose credibility of the facts he is stating. Also, despite tackling a very sensitive topic, the book is actually written in a simple manner, organized thoroughly, and given a unique spark by the thought-provoking writing style of Jensen. These characteristics definitely set out the book differently from the others. Jensen’s work appeals to readers because of its insightful and interesting attack of useful topics. It tackles not just facts about huge businesses, but also realities about the people who work behind them. According to the book, more than IQ, EQ is also equally, if not at times, more important in making a person successful. The ability to build good relationships often brings people to the top. What makes the book more appealing is that it addresses a reality that is already being enjoyed by half of the huge organizations while the other half remains ignorant or in denial of it. Jensen’s work offers a fresher and more honest perspective of the transformation of businesses that should not be overlooked. In corporate culture, businesses that focus on being closer to the emotional weaknesses of people guarantee more support from these consumers. The Dream Society also highlights how success stories of companies surpassing adversities and odds become essential tools in dominating the corporate culture. The Dream Society highlights the value of storytelling and the treatment of emotions as commodity as a part of the future of businesses. Products that are packaged in a more imaginative way have the ability to tap the emotions and support of the consumers. The author’s concrete example in the early parts of the book about consumers wanting to buy eggs that are naturally made even if they cost higher emphasize the argument that Jensen wants to present in this book that consumers buy with their hearts and it is bound to be this way for a very long time. Jensen’s work is an understandable prediction for business transformations in the coming decades but it neither offers guarantees nor detailed specific steps of what business owners and corporate leaders should do to make their make their businesses more successful. It only narrates the facts and what influences the market but it could not be considered a guide or directional book. It is an easy, unconventional, very informative, and enjoyable book to read that addresses realities about the market and the corporate world, but it could still not be classified as a guide book on business and how businesses should be run. One of the book’s most creative lines in describing how a business is run is that â€Å"managing a company means staging a drama, daily† (Jensen, 2001, p. 134). And this drama, the strategy of commercializing emotions, and storytelling to appeal to the hearts of the people makes product sell. The Dream Society is definitely different from other business books I have encountered. The author is obviously very talented not only in writing but also in making careful analysis about the future direction of the world’s market. Understanding the needs of the consumers is one of the most basic rules in marketing strategies. Despite being unconventional, Jensen’s book should still be considered a business book because it offers insightful and important facts about the probable future of the market. Even if it is written with simplicity, this does not limit the valuable lessons and realities it shares to its readers and makes it invaluable to the world of business and corporate culture. Reference Jensen, R. (2001). The Dream Society: How the Coming Shift from Information to Imagination will Transform Your Business. McGraw-Hill: New York