Flow is a subjective experience. As such the study of flow present two challenges.First, it is not currently possible to measure subjective experiences directly. We can not truly know another person’s subjective experiences. The second challenge that the subjective nature of flow presents to my research is the impossibility of testing a causal model with data that I collected on flow elements concurrently. Because I collected data on all of the elements of people’s flow experiences at the same time, I cannot make any strong claims about causality.
Ryan Quinn is Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior Olin School of Business Washington University One Brookings Drive St. Louis, MO
63130-4899Washington

Applied Research Developing an Experience Framework© to Create Value Share of heart versus share of mind by Thomas Thijssen, Ed Peelen and Susan Bink. The European Centre for the Experience Economy embarked on applied research to validate the popular management notions of experiences and their impact. In our book A New Perspective on the Experience Economy (Boswijk, Thijssen and Peelen, 2005) we developed characteristics of meaningful experiences from theory. These characteristics were translated in an on-line questionnaire to test the validity. Almost all characteristics proved valid through statistical analysis. If you would like to participate in future applied research, contact Thomas Thijssen, European director of research Thomas@experience-economy.com

De Hoven is a nursery home for elderly people in the north of the Netherlands . The mission of the Hoven is to facilitate elderly people to live their lifes as they choose to live it and make it as pleasant and meaningful as possible and to offer services that make life more convenient. Up till today the characteristics of large scale nursery homes are large rooms of 30 people, lack of privacy, strongly controlled living environment which is efficiency and economically driven. De Hoven is redesigning their premises on the basis of small scale living in decentralised units of 6 people as a family unit. Guests for instance take care of their own washing and cooking.The following research questions are postulated;

The main questions we will discuss in the sections of this paper are: 1) What is the nature of human experience? 2) What is the process of creating meaning? 3) What are the characteristics of meaningful experiences? 4) What are the starting points in bringing about meaningful experiences? 5) What are the design principles of meaningful experiences 6)What are the stages in designing and developing meaningful experiences?
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by Albert Boswijk, Thomas Thijssen en Ed Peelen
Pearson Education ISBN 90-430-0928-8

Or to be ordered either in the regular bookstores, or direct and for a signed copy by the authors please contact info@experience-economy.com

English version in the fall of 2006

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by Thomas Thijssen

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The dawn of the information society has created a need for a successful combination of life-long learning, entrepreneurial behavior and self-development. Organizations will have to be redefined as generic learning environments for individuals. This emerging perspective calls for new learning models and new learning infrastructures, examples of which are being developed at the University of Amsterdam.
The model described in this article involves three types of participants in the learning process and three methods of learning. The integrating concept is called Learning by Sharing. The participants are: business individuals, teachers/researchers and students. The three methods of learning are: learning by experimenting, learning by investigating, and learning through practice.

In this report from the European sector of the Experience Economy I would like to share some insights, provide an overview of emerging trends based on research, and demonstrate these trends in practice through European case studies. Our key finding: Experiences created from a place of passion for people (not purely founded in economics) make great contributions to the quality of life and are economically successful in the end. If the motive is purely economical, the lifecycle of these experiences will be shorter than those based on passion for people. These insights will definitely influence the research agenda of the European Centre for the Experience Economy in the near future, to focus more on quality of the lives of individuals and social groups and the role of experience offerings in enhancing this quality of life in an authentic and profitable way.

PhD research by drs. Anna Snel.   Promotor prof.dr.ir. R. Maes, Faculty of Economics & Econometrics (FEE) Universiteit van Amsterdam.

A lot is being written and said about the transformation from a service oriented economy to a new kind of economy. Books about this transition, be it from a service economy to an attention economy, experience economy, dream society or emotion economy, are instant bestsellers. Companies all of a sudden want to build communities of clients, want to stage customer experiences, want to improve the user experience on their website, want to experientialize the offices to satisfy and retain employees, want to transform their brand into an experience etc. By doing things like these, companies try to differentiate themselves from their competition, since allegedly it is becoming more and more difficult to differentiate oneself on the sole basis of quality of service.

Keywords: Experiences, Services, Communicative deep self-steering, Knowingness, Holonics & integral visions, Authentic business, Fields of knowledge, Learning and development.