We invite you to join us in historic Philadelphia on September 16 + 17 as we host our 12th annual Strategic Horizons thinkAbout. For more than a decade, thinkAbout has been the gathering place for professionals seeking to design and stage truly unique and memorable experiences in their enterprises.

In these challenging economic times, the ideas we articulated in our books, The Experience Economy and Authenticity, are more important than ever. Recapturing our economic vitality requires that we shift more rapidly away from commoditized and easily replicated goods and services. We must focus on creating greater economic value that cannot be easily automated, outsourced, knocked-off, or over-leveraged.

Offering experiences and transformations of course offers that next generation of value. Exploring ideas for how to best offer each lies at the core of our thinkAbout event.

To this end, thinkAbout will challenge you to learn in highly participatory environments and react to the variety of non-traditional provocations we stage. You will gain insights into the Experience Economy and the concomitant rising desire for authenticity. Throughout it all, you will be required to take creative risks and think in unique ways. It is the hallmark of thinkAbout and we simply wouldn’t have it any other way.

With Philadelphia as our host city, we thought it only appropriate that we limit this year’s thinkAbout to a symbolic 76 participants. So if you would like to take part, we encourage you to register today.

To that end, let us share a bit about the design of this year’s event.

First and foremost, we invite you to read our pamphlet, Economic Sense. It serves as both a treatise on the current state of the economy and our call to arms for establishing a more sustainable engine of commerce. Vibrant businesses fuel that engine whenever they find new ways of creating customer-unique value through experiences and transformations.

The piece draws its inspiration from the colonial firebrand Thomas Paine, and his well-known 1776 pamphlet Common Sense which railed against the tyranny of British rule. It helped ignite the passions of people seeking to overthrow the status quo. It has been called “the book that built America” and became a rallying cry for change and the light for a new pathway to freedom.

Embracing a similar mindset and enlisting the resources to realize the economic promise inherent in the Experience Economy requires a likeminded rebellion against the tyranny of current models of business competition, a fierce and independent entrepreneurial spirit, and truly new-to-the-world thinking. We intend to kick-off this year’s thinkAbout as an assembled body together discussing – and even debating – what exactly must be done to promote greater economic progress in staging experiences and guiding transformations.

For this year’s learning excursion (always an integral part of thinkAbout), we will traverse the streets of Philadelphia using a little-known technique called the “constrained walk.” The focus of our exploration, and formation of work teams, will be drawn from John Quincy Adams poem, The Wants of Man, published in 1841. (All registered participants will receive an unabridged, hardbound copy to read and study in advance of the event.) The excursion promises to be unlike any other we’ve ever guided, challenging all to navigate a city, and learn to learn, in very new ways.

We remain convinced that the very best way to maximize new understanding is to involve participants in generating output to share with others concerning what has been learned from the excursion experience. This year, each team will be asked to do that via preparation and presentation of a “constrained talk” (employing a more well-known presentation method called Pecha Kucha).

Through it all, we’ll of course dial in our usual mix of surprising activities and venues as part of the experience. We’ll also share our annual Top Ten list, present our Experience Stager of the Year (EXPY) and Experience Management Achievement (EMA) awards, and interview the recipients of each.

So do join us in Philadelphia and explore these ideas with us – and with your fellow Experience Economy enthusiasts – at thinkAbout. We promise a challenging and rewarding two days. And we can think of no better place to do it than Philadelphia – birthplace of Independence and City of Brotherly Love.

We trust you’ll love the event. Joining us, we do believe, makes great economic sense.

Experientially,

Joe Pine & Jim Gilmore
Co-authors, The Experience Economy and Authenticity,
Co-founders, Strategic Horizons LLP