Sunday morning 8.30 hours 11 closed its doors.(see ). After a zindering night of music and allnight dancing people didnot want to leave “their place” what has become the most attractive place for modern dance music over the last 4 years. The building blocks of the succes have been the sharp and attractive programming of upcoming dj’s. Not so well known but dedicated to their new form of music. The location on top of the post cs building with a great view over Amsterdam, plus the attractive and no nonsense food, and not to forget the team that the people behind 11 have build over the past period. A place where people felt home and wanted to spent their time. Writing this I feel sad that we cannot go there anymore and will not be able to invite friends and guests to this remarquable place. Thanks for what 11 has given us. There is a lot to learn from these guys how to create a social meeting place wit a mix of contempary culture, a true meaningful place.

The most important aspects of communities are living, working, marriage, family. There is no choice, it is for better or worse. There are multistranded relationships, which create a bundle of interdependent relationships. It empirically proved that we are only capable to manage 150 relationships of relevant others. Flexibility and variation is determined by your feet(limited mobility) and there are variations in being equal.The shapes of communities are dependent on their reason of existence. They are like a band and are very stable. They are internally very structured by families, clans, areas and have their own political structure base on age, ex, and experience. Communities changed through the change of their means of existence of energy and production. The so called “web communities ” are pure social networks.Wouter van Beek argues that these “communities” are complementary to existing communities and not an substitute.Participants are only engaged part of their time, there is what he calls a new sodality, geografically speaking there is almost ubiquity , contentwise they are limited,and interaction is seriously reduced, and they only touch one site of the personality.Through the web there are no functional communities. Wouter van Beek spoke at the yearly Vint conference of Sogeti, Leading the big Change. He is antropologist and studies the history and development of communities at the Tilburg University and the African Studies Centre of the University of Leiden.

Creating business for water and health in de consumer market, agriculture and third world. At Philips High Tech Campus, Brabant Water, Waterschap de Dommel, TNO, Philips Research, Kiwa, Brainport Eindhoven and the province of Brabant founded an innovative platform for ventures in the Water and Health market. The European Centre for the Experience Economy was asked to contribute to the kick off of this innovative platform. There is high level of knowledge present in the Netherlands. All the knowledge is focused around the producing companies and insitutes. The initiative is motivated by the fact that this knowledge is not fast enough converted into concepts around points of use.A new vision is needed around health, wellnes, durability, safety and lifestyle. For more information see www.helixer.nl ,for presentation see download

The thing that stuck with me most of many of the cases was the importance of ‘externalities’. Externalities are usually defined as third-party or spillover effects that happen in economic activity. It was remarkable in how many cases that were discussed and presented during the Experience Academy this type of externalities was involved. It could be that these are an important part of experiences in general and that they have to be taken into account if one wants to understand what the actual value of the experience is.

Cliff Crosby told us about a research project that took place in Nokia, on the most loved and admired brands. One of the results of this research was that if everything was taken away, people would try to hold on to their mobile phone. The phone is an object that people want to have near to them all day long, just like they would want to be near a loved one as much as they could. People need to fall in love.

Today, in the people age, as Josephine Green of Philips calls it, the way personnel is dealt with and treated becomes more and more important. Although according to Nokia’s Cliff Crosby, personnel is not the primary reason for selling, one should keep in mind that they are the primary input for making the sale. If you expect them to deliver excellent service, you should also give them exceptional benefits. If these people are the ones that the customer comes into contact with in what should be a highly personal and memorable experience, then this means that their personality is crucial.

Nokia’s Cliff Crosby told that he knows everything there is to know about the Nokia N95. When someone sitting next to him in the airplane asks about this phone, he can not only explain everything in 10 minutes, but do it in such a way that this person will also want one. The problem is: how can you replicate this experience millions and millions of times? How do you make the experience scalable? The same issue came to the fore in the presentation of the Academia Barilla-case of Gian Luigi Zenti. How can you replicate experiences and reconcile the principles of scale and uniqueness?

In the words of Philips’ Josephine Green: we are going from pyramids to pancakes. We have to leave the pyramid which was all about one truth that has to be communicated downwards from the top, and go towards the pancake which is more about equality and networks. This also means that values, behaviors and organizational principles have to change.

” I visit reguraly refreshing courses for professors at Harvard or ISE . This is way way better, more profound, way more relevant content, the selection of speakers is 10 times as better. This is really different”

As a frequent speaker on peer to peer issues, there is always a temptation to settle into routines, and if you do so many lectures, there is always a danger that your memory turns originally distinct experiences into a single blur.
There is one event in the year where I think this will not happen, and these are the memorable experiences of the annual gathering of the Center for the Experience Economy. One of the highlights was Mark Hansen, director of Business Development at Lego, who has been focusing his life’s work on spurring co-creation processes between Lego as a corporate community and the legions of fans that are normally operating independently of the company. This year Mark Hansen gave us an equally fascinating account of his progress. I have no longer any doubt that Lego is simply, at least if Mark’s projects can be further carried out, the paradigmatic example of the mutual adaptation of a business with its surrounding communities. Rather than prohibiting user involvement, Mark’s instinct go into the opposite direction of learning to tap further and further into it, and to develop mutually beneficial relationships.