{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e","title":"Time, Consumption and Everyday Life Practice, Materiality and Culture","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":null,"requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e","id":"1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e","uuid":"1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e","title":"Time, Consumption and Everyday Life Practice, Materiality and Culture","normalized_title":"timeconsumptionandeverydaylifepracticematerialityandculture","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":null,"isbns":[],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":236,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Time%2C%20Consumption%20and%20Everyday%20Life%20Practice%2C%20Materiality%20and%20Culture","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e/search"},"page":{"printed_page":132,"pdf_page":133,"physical_index":133,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"20077560d28f8f0fc838bdd380ad6af8ae5d57fdc63375b648e25f04d24e2247"},"chapter":"List of Tables and Figures","content":"The story of the shirt-pocket radio could serve as an ‘ideal-typical’ innovation process.<sup>2</sup> As Schiffer (1993) shows, technical solutions and models of a portable radio existed a long time before it became a marketable commodity. Even after the invention of the transistor in 1947 it took almost ten years before the shirt-pocket radio became a commercial success. This time lag was not the result solely of high prices or the inferior technical qualities of earlier models. When the local radio stations started broadcasting rock and roll music, American teenagers often defied their parents’ strong disapproval to listen, and the shirt-pocket radio satisfied this new ‘need’. Soon a new group of enthusiastic young customers were willing to experiment with totally new manners of listening to music.\n\nSchiffer makes a useful addition to Schumpeter’s theory of innovation by pointing out the important role of cultural imperatives:\n\nA cultural imperative is a product fervently believed by a group – its constituency – to be desirable and inevitable, merely awaiting technological means for its realization … it is a fancy of a group, often a very small group, captivated by the vision. Members of the constituency are likely to believe that when the product is ‘perfected’ it will have popular appeal, but this belief may be little more than wishful thinking. (Schiffer 1993: 99)\n\nThis constituency of enthusiastic radio amateurs had existed decades before their cherished product found its broader customers and became an item of mass consumption. As Schiffer stressed, once the product has become commercialized, its possible successes and failures in the marketplace have nothing to do with the size or social character of its, often small, original constituency. The existence of such a constituency, resembling a hobby or art world (Becker 1982), is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for the emergence and survival of an invention (Schiffer 1993: 113).<sup>3</sup>\n\n132\n\n• Jukka Gronow","previous_page":131,"next_page":133}