As of this writing, this is the final section of the book (before some sort of afterword – a reflection, actually! – that I have yet to write). Short and (I hope) sweet, it provides the megatrend implicit within the Progression of Economic Value, the route to human flourishing.
Joe
P.S. We pushed this post to Tuesday given Memorial Day in the United States, which honors those who have died in their service to this country.
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Individualization
Fully embrace transformations as a distinct economic offering by charging for the demonstrated outcomes your customers achieve. This puts your enterprise economically in the transformation business; without doing so, you’re transformational, but still offering experiences, services, or maybe even goods.
Further recognize the megatrend of the Progression of Economic Value: individualization. As shown in Figure 8-2, this incorporates the customization arrows going up the Progression, such customization treating customers as the individuals they truly are, not as a market, nor a segment, nor a niche, nor a generation, nor a persona, nor any other agglomeration of anonymous buying units of indeterminate size. All customers are individuals, whether an individual, living, breathing human being; an individual, organic, united organization; an individual active, corporeal business; or an individual, constituent, social community.
Each successive economic offering going up the Progression gets you closer and closer and closer to the individual.
Moreover, each successive economic offering going up the Progression gets you closer and closer and closer to what each customer really truly desires, needs, and aspires as an individual. Commodities are merely the raw materials for manufacturing goods. Goods are merely the means for delivering the service activities customers value. Together these three lower-order offerings offer time well saved. Services are merely the means underlying the staging of memorable experiences, which offer the time well spent customers value more highly. And experiences are the means by which you can guide customers to achieve their aspirations, to transform their identity by going from “I was X, now I am Y”. Transformations yield the greatest economic value, offering time well invested when time is the most precious resource we have.
The customer is the product – it is a changed being that individuals seek from transformation guiders.
And finally, commodities, goods, and services exist outside of us, while experiences happen inside of us and transformations change our very identity. Commodities are arms-length stuff we hardly ever touch and feel anymore. Goods are tangible objects that we own, such as our cars, clothes, and so forth. Services are activities performed on those objects, such as changing the oil in our car or cleaning our clothes, or on our selves, such as cutting our hair or measuring our blood pressure. Experiences for the first time reach inside of us, in reaction to the events that are staged in front of us. And transformations change us from the inside out based on the experiences we undergo. With transformations the customer is the product – it is a changed being that individuals seek from transformation guiders.
With every step of further individualization you generate more and more economic value for your enterprise precisely because you create more and more value within your customers, helping them become who they want to become and be who they are meant to be. Individualization is the route to human flourishing.
Joe Pine
© 2025 B. Joseph Pine II