Welcome to Your Transformations Book Subscription

The Great "What's Next" after The Experience Economy

Mar 14, 2024

Welcome! I appreciate you joining this Substack offering where I will write my next book, tentatively entitled The Transformation Economy: Guiding Customers in Achieving their Aspirations.

In the last two chapters of The Experience Economy, Jim Gilmore and I declared and discussed that there was one more offering in the Progression of Economic Value, where businesses use experiences as the raw material to guide people (or business customers) to change, to help them achieve their aspirations. In some ways, the first eight chapters were just a Trojan Horse to get readers to understand that the greatest economic value lies in helping customers become who they want to become.

So people have been asking me for over 20 years when I was going to write a full book on the Transformation Economy. My response was always twofold: I don’t know enough about transformations, and the world isn’t ready for it.

Those statements are no longer true.

All along I’ve paid attention to the possibility of when the economy based on transformations would supplant the Experience Economy, and have studied and worked with companies that were in fact guiding their customers to transform. My knowledge has increased greatly, particularly over the past few years. You may have seen one result: the Harvard Business Review article from January/February 2022, “The ‘New You’ Business”, which I wrote with Jim, Dave Norton, founder of insights consultancy Stone Mantel, and lead author Lance Bettencourt, professor at Texas Christian University.

Dave has been particularly helpful in this thinking thanks to The Collaboratives on which I’ve worked with him and colleagues for a number of years. These are yearlong multi-client studies that gather people together from many different companies to research various topics around experience innovations (Stone Mantel’s specialty), with each participating business walking away with a new experience strategy. And the past few years the Transformation Economy has been one of the key objects of study, with qualitative and quantitative insights. (One framework on types of transformative experiences came directly from this research.)

So, I definitely know enough about the Transformation Economy. And the world’s definitely ready for it! This is true both for customers, who increasingly recognize they need help in achieving their aspirations, and for companies, who increasingly recognize the economic value they can create by getting into the transformation business. As we said in the HBR article:

Even though we’re all filled with hopes, aims, and ambitions, significant change is incredibly hard to accomplish on our own. Enterprises should recognize the economic opportunity offered by the transformation business, in which they partner with consumers to improve some fundamental aspect of their lives – to achieve a “new you”.

Writing the Book

Therefore it…. is…. time. I have started the book on the Transformation Economy, and I’m really very, very excited about it! And this is in large part because of this subscription offering, where I am writing the book through Substack, posting my initial writing, particularly on frameworks, and – here’s the important part – get feedback on it from you. I want you to validate whether (or not) they work, in particular whether (or not) they first describe well what’s happening as we shift into the Transformation Economy, and most importantly prescribe effectively what you and your company and/or clients can do about it.

After you provide feedback, I’ll then work on writing up the framework more fully, adding in some examples, and then share it with you once more. You can again let me know what works and what doesn’t (if anything. . . . :-), and then I’ll write the full chapter to share with you yet again.

And that means that you will have access to all my ideas, principles, and frameworks that go into the Transformation Economy book long before anyone else does. You will learn from them, you can apply them, and you can start transforming your own company to thrive in the forthcoming Transformation Economy.

And More

Moreover, on my initial posts on any idea, principle, or framework I will be writing not just for you, but to you. You will get a peek behind the curtain, so to speak, to see how I think, how I develop ideas and turn them into frameworks, and how I apply those frameworks through many examples that make them clear. I certainly hope you will gain great value from that. (Or you may just find it scary. . . .)

Although I worry a bit about putting too many posts out there (let me know!) – I want to finish the book this year, possibly by fall – I also plan on sharing articles on the Transformation Economy out in the press or elsewhere, with commentary; some book reviews that cover territory you may find of value; examples I find very telling (that may or may not make it into the book); early access to articles I might write on this and other subjects; tools that you can apply in your business; and I’m sure some things I haven’t thought of yet. (Suggestions welcome!)

I’ll also periodically get on Zoom and invite you and your fellow subscribers to a session where you will get direct access to me, where I’ll talk about some aspects of what I am seeing, thinking, and writing, and give you the opportunity to share your thoughts and ask questions as well.

So, again, welcome!

You will already see on here a few other initial posts: a more personal welcome video, a “catchup” summary of The Experience Economy (skip it if you don’t need it), and the opening of the first chapter of the book (which covers some of the same territory as the summary, but in more depth). Well, at over 3,000 words, it’s more than the chapter opening, but it does give a full picture of the Progression of Economic Value at the core of both The Experience Economy and The Transformation Economy: Guiding Customers in Achieving their Aspirations.

And depending on when you join, there may be many more! You can jump in at any point, but if you want it all then start from that first Chapter post on the Progression of Economic Value and proceed from there. And obviously but necessary to say, please do not post anywhere any of the posts here, nor share them with anyone else.

By the way, given I’m writing the book here to you, on Substack, I’m planning on posting twice a week – Mondays and Thursdays – so fair warning, there will be a lot of posts!

I thank you for joining me on this writing journey and look forward to your comments and interactions. To start, please do fill out this “About Me” form so I can, well, learn more about you:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScHR4Bzfk8k3ErLBKX4G0yp2vL6ftYPop_6cw9dcQS1z5ap1g/viewform

Joe Pine

PS: If you’re already a fan of my work (or are becoming one!) and have not already subscribed to my free quarterly FieldNotes newsletter, you can visit my website here and sign up. FieldNotes contains stories that we’ve hand-curated for our subscribers and is full of relevant news and fascinating developments in the worlds of customization, experiences, and now transformations.