James H. Gilmore

Jim Gilmore will share his perspective on excellent design, and how successful design necessarily varies for goods, services, and experiences. He will share his perspective on the design appeal of the (experience) enterprises that have won Pine & Gilmore’s Experience Stager of the Year (EXPY) award, but then present examples of the physical things (goods) and intangible activities (services) that he most admires for their design distinctions, and the principles he detects that create their appeal.

One of the privileges for Jim Gilmore as result from the success of The Experience Economy is the number of entrepreneurs who contact him for feedback about the launch of their experience-based ventures. In this session, Jim will walk through ten start-up businesses that have approached him in recent years in search of advice and/or capital. Jim has secured permission from each new venture to share their basic business concept. The audience will then vote on which they think is most viable. In a shockingly unexpected finale to the talk, Jim will share his perspective on the role Reality TV played in conceptualizing each new enterprise!

A fundamental shift is occurring in the very fabric of our economy. Today, what people desire are neither goods nor services, but something very different in kind, namely experiences that engage them in a personal and memorable way. Such experiences will increasingly command a premium fee and provide the basis for generating new revenue growth in for individual businesses and overall prosperity for both advanced and developing nations. In this provocative session, Jim will describe the nature of this emerging Experience Economy and outline principles for staging compelling experiences.

In a world filled with ever more mediated and staged experiences, an increasingly unreal world, consumers are now making decisions based on how real they perceive various offerings to be. As a result, enterprises must become adept at rendering authenticity. Finding ways to tap into this emerging sensibility will become essential for success in the years and decades to come. This new challenge can be defined best as the management of the customer perception of authenticity. To be blunt: you must get real and not just claim you’re real.