James H. Gilmore is the co-Founder of Strategic Horizons, LLC, a thinking group that helps businesses imagine and design new ways to add value to their economic offerings. In 1999, he co-authored the book The Experience Economy with Joseph Pine II. In it, they introduced their groundbreaking framework for understanding the progression of economic value over the course of modern human history. They proposed that each time the defining motor of an economic era shifts, it takes us some time to understand and realize that we are no longer primarily selling our customers what we think we are selling them. In 1999, they proposed that we had progressed from a service economy to an experience economy. Now, Jim tells us, it has shifted again.

In this Tugboat Institute® talk, Jim expounds on his original theory. He then shares his updated thinking on the model. He proposes that today, most of us have caught up with the reality that what we’ve been primarily selling in recent decades is an experience, rather than a good or a service. However, we are lagging again. According to his model, while we may not yet realize it, the focus of our businesses has again shifted; we are now in a transformation economy.