* Consumer Shift: How Changing Values Are Reshaping the Consumer Landscape.  Andy Hines (Lecturer and Executive-in-Residence, Graduate Program in Future Studies, U of Houston).  Tempe AZ: No Limit Publishing Group, 2011, 292p.  The old approaches to understanding consumers aren’t working, and the landscape of the next decade is likely to be quite different.  A rethink is needed about shifts to postmodern values reinforced by the Great Recession.  Five key themes: 1) Authenticity: people are tired of being managed and manipulated; 2) Connection: related to feeling that life is out of control is the desire to get reconnected to what is really important; 3) Anti-Consumerism: disenchantment with consuming has been gaining momentum, as people beyond poverty level seek to trade off money and material goods for time to enjoy experiences; 4) Self-Expression: people are turning inward and re-assessing the meaning of their lives, with a search for deeper meaning and purpose; 5) Enoughness: voluntary simplicity by choice or necessity; acceptance and embrace of the need for limits.  Chapters discuss what’s going on deep inside consumers (identity, needs, values, mind-body), what’s being said to consumers, patterns in changing values, the shift to integral values (the next wave behind postmodern values), consumer co-creation and augmentation, consumer “sweet spots” (23 emerging need states in seven meta-needs such as pursuit of happiness, simplicity, local community preference,, global citizens), future personas, and the three “worlds” of nations (affluent nations, emerging markets, nations mired in poverty).  (BUSINESS * SOCIETY * CONSUMER VALUES * VALUES OF CONSUMERS)

*The New Industrial Revolution: Consumers, Globalization and the End of Mass Production.  Peter Marsh (Financial Times; London).  New Haven, CT: Yale U Press, May 2012, 320p, $35.  The rapid emergence of China and India as prime locations for low-cost manufacturing has led some to conclude that manufacturers in the “old economies” – the US, UK, Germany, and Japan – are being edged out of a profitable future.  This analysis of the industrial revolution that is taking place right now shows that opportunities are not over for these countries.  Considers advances in technology, a greater focus on tailor-made goods aimed at specific individuals and industry users, participation of many more countries in world manufacturing, and the growing importance of sustainable forms of production. (WORLD ECONOMY * NEW INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION * MANUFACTURING * BUSINESS)

** The Corporate Whistleblower’s Survival Guide: A Handbook for Committing the Truth.  Tom Devine (Legal Director, Government Accountability Project) and Tarek F. Maassarani (Adjunct Prof of Communication and Human Rights, George Washington U).  San Francisco CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers and Government Accountability Project, April 2011, 288p, $19.95pb (also as e-book).  The Government Accountability project has helped over 5,000 people blow the whistle since 1977.  Corporate whistleblowers save lives, prevent fraud, and preserve the environment by undergoing a long, difficult, draining, and often frightening process.  They rarely have any idea what they’re in for and, daunted by the ferocity of the resistance and their feelings of isolation and helplessness, some give up, and others are broken financially and emotionally.  Describes the tactics corporations use to attack whistleblowers and cover up or deny damaging revelations, and provides practical advice to whistleblowers on how to find information to support their claims,  who to blow the whistle to, how to enlist allies, and taking advantage of legal opportunities.                                                                                          (BUSINESS * METHODS * WHISTLEBLOWER’S SURVIVAL GUIDE * GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECT)

* Report on the Green Transition Scoreboard.  Hazel Henderson, Rosalinda Sanquiche, and Timothy Jack Nash (all www.EthicalMarkets.com).  St. Augustine FL: Ethical Markets Media, Feb 2011, 26p (free online).  The Green Transition Scoreboard, created by Hazel Henderson (longtime futurist and author of The Politics of the Solar Age, Doubleday Anchor 1981), is a global tracking of private financial system for all sectors investing in green markets.  In the 2007-2010 period, $1,359 billion was invested in Renewable Energy, $282 billion in Efficiency and Green Construction, $65 billion in Cleantech (agriculture, materials, recycling, wastewater, etc.), $135 billion in Smart Grid (companies building infrastructure), and $164 billion in Corporate R&D (with thousands of R&D projects still unaccounted for).  This finding of >$2 trillion “puts global investors and countries on track to reach $10 trillion in investments by 2020.  [Note: This distinctive and heartening report will be updated every six months.]