Infinite Possibility: Creating Customer Value on the Digital Frontier [Hardcover]

In a very detailed and informative account of experience design, the authors delineate how framing business models in the context of "experience" facilitates the increasing convergence of real and technology-enabled virtual worlds. The fundamental premise is that disruptive innovations can emerge from this focus, and by motivating the reader using example of Starbucks as a disruptor in a relatively boring industry by focusing on "experience", the author provides credence to this premise. (Review based on advance copy from NetGalley and a subsequent purchase of the final version, adapted from my blog).

The remainder of the book focuses on how an innovative (and fairly complex) multiverse model can help business modelers leverage experience design techniques. Much of it is based on a very compelling "progression of economic value" framework the authors use to contextualize their arguments. Using various examples, the authors argue the various gradations of digitally infused experiences and how IT can enable different business models to augment reality.

The first chapter introduces their complex multiverse leveraging time, space, matter axes. Using time, space and matter axes, the authors constructs 8 octants (encompassing different "forms" of reality and virtuality) through a very dense discussion that is not very intuitive and a nomenclature that is quite confusing (as the authors point out, their mutliverse concept is not for light reading). Nevertheless, the discussions provides a novel and interesting way to frame "experiences". Specific examples help to orient the reader but this is a concept that probably needs a pull-out as you plough your way through the book.

In the next chapter, the authors embrace a "mindulness" type argument that technology should not be for technology sake, but for enhancing experience. The authors then start discussing each of the octants in their universe in a chapter devoted to each one. Chapter 3 explores augmented reality - using examples ranging from Fanvision, Layar to location-aware services and games, authors provide suggestions on how to frame the augmented reality in service design (broad pointers,may not be specific enough for some readers - but the intent is to provide a thought framework). In the discussion on alternate reality, authors focus on mostly gaming applications - pervasive games, geo-caching, geoteaming, while the chapter on warped reality expounds on the concept of "experience flow", examples from casinos and theme parks - addresses how experiences can protect us from "tyranny of time". The same approach is taken by the authors in discussing their octants on virtuality, augmented virtuality, and mirrored virtuality. In each, the authors provide a motivating example to show the octants' characteristics, differentiate it with others and explain the core principles associated with that octant. Given the complex multiverse they constructed and the relatively subjective view on characterizing "experience", some overlap is to be anticipated. However, the authors provide a set of good pointers that can be leveraged by any designer.

The rest of the book focuses on the execution of such a multiverse and serves almost as a playbook for experience designers or business modelers who want a different framing to understand how to infuse experience design in their thinking. The reader may have been better served if the authors built a specific example as they discuss their "excursion" through their mutliverse. Overall, despite the dense topic and not-so-intuitive selection of axes and nomenclature, the book is likely to become rated as a must-read for business modelers and experience designers. Despite some forced analogies of explorers/navigators, the authors manage to sustain the reader interest with motivating examples, appropriate citations, and suggestions on employing their theory in particular environments. The use of symbols for each of the octants to help the reader quickly relate to the text is a welcome feature (Kindle readers may want to preview the book to ensure pictures are clearly visible).

Educators everywhere are grappling with a core paradox. Children, aged 6 through 18, live in two worlds. The morning world is real, based in school. The evening world is virtual, based in Facebook, Twitter and other social networks.
But for our kids, believe me, the virtual world is far more real than the real world. For them, the real world of brick-and-mortar schools is boring, unimaginative and for them increasingly irrelevant. And herein lies the problem. How can we make the real world more relevant, more meaningful, to them than their unreal (virtual) world? Simply, by embracing the latter and blending it with the former.
A new book by B. Joseph Pine II and Kim C. Korn, titled Infinite Possibility: Creating Customer Value on the Digital Frontier (BK Publishers: San Francisco, 2011), can help.
Pine takes a cue from Einstein, who redefined the relationship between time, space and matter. The real world, Pine observes, in his Figure 1.2 and Figure 1.3, has matter, has time and has space. The virtual world has none of those three. Yet increasingly, we are living in a digital virtual world. Digital technology makes possible vivid memorable experiences that the real world cannot truly rival. (Imagine sitting in a top tier seat, at Real Madrid's Camp Neu stadium, and watching tiny figures miles away dance around the field, with binoculars; now add a hand-held HDTV and watch them up large, up-close, with only the ambience of crowd noise to distract you from the virtual soccer field). Pine leads us systematically through several permutations and combinations of space/non space, matter/non-matter, and time/non-time, to create vivid new offerings based on digital technology.
Here is an example of an innovation that uses the virtual to make life much more real. Most videoconferencing technology requires extensive bandwidth, to stream live video. Some Boston entrepreneurs have created venuegen, software that replaces real video figures with avatars, based on photographs. (www.venuegen.com) . The avatar `learns' to mimic the motions of the real figures participating in the videoconference. It gesticulates, moves, wriggles, and emphasizes. Avatars need a tiny fraction of the bandwidth that video streaming demands. The inventors got the idea from video games. An avatar can be more real, for participants, than a real fuzzy blurred and jerky video image.
Read "Infinite Possibility", then re-invent your offerings to explore and exploit the amazing new world of the virtual. It's time, innovator, to get real by getting far less real.

Was talking at our regular Thursday morning slot on Newstalk about "Infinite possibility" by Joe Pine and Kim Korn. Joe (I met Joe in Amsterdam and we are on first name basis ;) is the author of the experience economy and this book is a natural extension. The experience economy was written in 1999 and was then way ahead of its time.With the tsunami of digital it needed another book on how to extend the experience economy and embrace the digital frontiers.

Yes, this book is about "to boldly go where no man has gone before" or to quote Buzz Lightyear; "to infinity and beyond!" This is about creativity and product development along some very interesting development lines. The classic core development lines are space, time, matter. Infinite possibility adds non time, non space and non matter and thus creating a new universe for innovation. What "spaces" do you get if you start combining these development lines:

reality
augmented reality
physical virtuality
mirrored virtuality
warped reality
alternate reality
augmented virtuality
virtuality
Once you have done that, the new world is full of possibilities. Which brings you into the world of Wii, Guitar Hero, Deus Ex, cyberpunk, Second Life, 3D printing, avatars, Layar, Bookbuzz (yes!), Walt Disney, LEGO, Organovo, personal fabrication, World Lense and Tom-Tom. And this is just the beginning!As a science fiction freak you can understand that I am very taken by the book and not that surprised by what is now possible.

Ian Geider, the presenter of the show, asked me if this is relevant to business. Because this does sound like science fiction. You bet! You only need to read "Break from the pack" by Harari to understand how commoditization and technology are a constant threat to your company. This is a way to create an edge. To break free.

Are you still in doubt? I always like to refer to "What technology wants"; The technetium is the technology eco system that surrounds us. The technetium contains 170 quadrillion (a quadrillion is one thousand million millions) chips. The number of neurons in your brain is similar to the number of transistors in the global network. The number of file links is similar to number of synapse links in your brain. The planetary electronic membrane surrounding the worlds is comparable to the complexity of the human brain.

There is no escaping technology and its impact on your business. This book gives you the tool set to apply attribute listing (chopping up you business, product or service in the smallest parts possible and find alternatives) in a completely new way and fundamentally change your business model in a blue ocean of infinite possibilities.

If you don't, your competitor will.