I am almost finished with the book proposal to my publisher – and this Substack offering has been tremendously helpful in doing so! Thank you for being there, for reading, and providing me with great feedback.
Here let me share two sections of the proposal with you, the first being the proposed Table of Contents with a paragraph summary of each. I specifically say in introducing the TOC: “Note that this is merely a proposed TOC at this point; I fully expect it to change based on what I learn during the writing, particularly through the feedback initiative of my Substack offering.” So here I am most interested in if you think the proposed chapters suffice for now, and if there’s anything missing, which I’ll ask via the form link at the end of this post.
The second section is the Audience. Publishers want to know who authors see as the primary readers of their books, and authors always want to say “Everybody! Anyone in any position in any company needs to read this book and will love it!” I have the same leanings, naturally, but below is my more specific response to the prompt. And since I know you do want to read the book because you are a subscriber, I would like to know if you see yourself in there, and if not let me know why on the form.
Anyone in any position in any company needs to read this book and will love it!
Speaking of forms, I’m still learning about Google Forms and while trying to solve one problem (I would like to know who is giving what feedback) I instigated another: forcing you to have to put in an email address, which Google then didn’t even associate with specific answers!
I think I’ve fixed that, and as I said once before, if you would like to put your name or email address in particular individual answers to let me know where the feedback comes from, I would appreciate that.
Here’s the book proposal excerpts:
Proposed Table of Contents
Preface
It is time. The Transformation Economy is hot on the heels of the Experience Economy, for both supply & demand reasons. The demand is there, in no small part because of the shift into the Experience Economy and the commoditization of goods & services, freeing up time and money to not only undergo memorable experiences, not only undertake meaningful experiences, but tackle transformative experiences. Transformations provide so much more value because they reach inside of customers and change them from the inside out, helping them become who and what they want to be.
Chapter 1: The New You Business
We have shifted from an economy based on commodities, the Agrarian Economy, through an economy based on goods, the Industrial Economy, beyond the Service Economy, and today we are in an Experience Economy, where experiences are the predominant economic offering. But hot on its heels is the Transformation Economy. Transformations are the fifth and final economic offering where enterprises use experiences as the raw material to guide people to change. There is no greater economic value you can create than to help customers achieve their aspirations.
Chapter 2: It’s About Time
The most precious resource on the planet is the time of individual human beings. And companies waste their time, well, all the time. Businesses must end the time wasted they inflict on their customers to first deliver time well saved, selling things or activities that save customers’ time. In fact, people want goods & services to be commoditized – sold at the least possible price and the greatest possible convenience – in order to spend their hard-earned money and their harder-earned time on the experiences & transformations they value. Experiences offer time well spent, where what people buy is the time they spend to be engaged by the company. And transformations create time well invested changing customers in ways that yield dividends and obtain compound interest now and into the future.
Chapter 3: The Human Desire for Transformation
While an economy with transformations as its predominant economic offering is new, the desire for transformation is as old as humanity itself. As more and more of the work on transformations shifts from self-guided to company-guided, businesses must understand customers more intimately than ever before. They must understand who their customers are, which can include not only individual people but businesses, communities, and even society in general. They must understand why they have a desire to change – what catalyzes a transformation – and what kinds of transformations they desire (something explored more deeply in Chapter 5). Businesses must understand where transformations truly happen, and when such transformations are best started and completed. And they must understand how people, individually and collectively, change in regenerating both their identity and their behavior.
Chapter 4: Healthy, Wealthy, Wise, and. . . .
Any enterprise in the business of helping people become, in Ben Franklin’s famous phrase, healthy, wealthy, and wise is in the transformation business. However, it’s not just about being healthy but having health & wellbeing. It’s not just about being wealthy but having wealth & prosperity. And it’s not just about being wise but having wisdom & understanding. They comprise three spheres of the Transformation Economy, with one more: purpose & meaning. People desire to have meaning in their lives, to live lives of purpose, and it is perhaps the most important aspect of our selves. And at the intersection of the four spheres lies their commonality: they all enable human flourishing. Lying at the heart of the spheres of transformation, human flourishing is the true purpose of business, it’s raison d’être.
Chapter 5: Transformative Experiences
Transformations are built atop experiences; we only ever change because of the experiences we have. (As the saying goes, we’re all the products of our experiences!) So businesses must embrace the different types of transformative experiences to know when to apply which type during the entire transformational journey. And each different type of transformative experience manifests itself differently depending on the sphere of transformation it affects, each one a different route to flourishing for each individual customer. And interestingly, many customers at many times are not even looking for a full transformation; they often seek more of a transportation, a temporary state in which they become someone else or test out a new element of identity that may or may not become part of themselves. When companies detect this, they can both heighten the level of transportation and use it to help customers determine, on reflection, what it means to them.
Chapter 6: Guiding Transformations
While readers will learn much in the previous chapters, this one is the primary how to, answering the seventh interrogatory inquiry question of “in what way?” – in what way can businesses help customers transform? More specifically, how do you determine customers’ individual aspirations? How do you bring goods, services, and experiences together to integrate a customized solution? What is the journey along which you can take customers from where they are today to what they want to become? How do you charge for transformations, as opposed to the lower-level economic offerings in the Progression of Economic Value? How do you incorporate wisdom & understanding in your own transformation guiding, and use artificial intelligence to do so more effectively? And in what way can you shift from manufacturing goods, delivering services, and staging memorable experiences to guiding transformations as your primary economic offering?
Chapter 7 [or Afterword]: Being Intentional
As a result of this book, you will be able to answer the most important question people can ask themselves about their enterprise: What business are we really in? And they do so by bringing intention to their businesses, their work, and their lives.
Audience
One key audience for The Transformation Economy is experience stagers. Obviously, readers of The Experience Economy will naturally gravitate to this book, but whether or not they read the previous one, experience stagers are well positioned to take advantage of this one. For transformations are built atop experiences; we only ever change because of the experiences we have. (As the saying goes, we’re all the products of our experiences!) Any enterprise in the experience business can use what they read here to create more economic value by focusing their experiences on the aspirations of their guests.
Service providers can also take advantage of the ideas, principles, and frameworks in this book. This is particularly true in B2B industries, for what service providers deliver are so very often the means by which people and businesses transform themselves. If they focus on the ends outlined in this book, rather than on mere means, then they too will create great economic value. (Goods manufacturers are less well positioned to shift fully up into transformation guiding, but they too can focus on ends vs. means, particularly in their service offerings.)
From a company perspective, however, the number one audience are those enterprises already in the transformation business – think in particular of healthcare, financial advisors, and educators (each one being a huge industry) – but they do not yet know it. And that is so very often the case, thinking they deliver services because they do not yet have the vocabulary to know that they guide transformations for aspirants by understanding their aspirations and charging for the outcomes achieved.
“Thank you for giving me a vocabulary to describe what I do for a living.”
The most frequent – and gratifying comment – I received after The Experience Economy came out was “Thank you for giving me a vocabulary to describe what I do for a living.” I fully expect to receive that comment in regard to transformations as well.
From an employee perspective, the primary audience is executive leadership, including C-level positions and heads of operations, strategy, marketing, and “product” development. One particular title that would be an ideal reader is, naturally, the Chief Experience Officer. A virtually unknown title when The Experience Economy came out, there are now thousands of thousands of CXOs around the world. And – no surprise – there are increasingly Chief Transformation Officers and other such titles with the word “transformation” in them as well, a group that will no doubt find themselves and their work in this book.
One other title I’ll mention is Manager of Consumer Insights and its variants, as they are always seeking new, well, insights into what people desire, and people increasingly desire not only memorable experiences but effectual transformations as well.
And one other non-titled but key audience for the book is independent consultants. I have found that such people are always looking for an edge to remain competitive against larger consulting companies, and – at least by the number who we have certified as Experience Economy Experts – have often found that in my long writing on experience staging. That will be doubly true of The Transformation Economy, for not only will it help them enhance the value their clients create, it is the business they are in.
Joe Pine
© 2024 B. Joseph Pine II
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Please do fill out this form to provide me with feedback on these parts of the book proposal:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSep2mT9wDuzRqOrqZPaqZsDJVNv82Su9a_mu2RALYEqQwH8Vw/viewform