It was expected that the talk of Diane Nijs would appeal to our imagination. She is, as far as I know, the only professor in Imagineering.

Back in August, I already tried to get hold of this professor for one of my “20 Knappe Koppen” interviews. Unfortunately, her busy schedule at the Dutch university where she works didn’t allow this. The nickname of her department is “Imagineering”, with the full title being “Research Centre for Strategy, Change and Innovation in the Experience Economy”. ” Wow, Experience Economy. A term that immediately indicates what it is all about: consumers no longer look for companies to supply them services but to allow them to live experiences.

At the start of her talk, Diane used a clever mind trick: the audience had to choose between a rectangle, triangle, circle and S shape. Luckily for her, the majority chose the circle, indicating a personality that is fit for sex-boost-rock-and-roll-people. Apparently these people are better qualified for change management than either intellectuals, born leaders or creatives.

And change is what it is all about. The idea behind imagineering is that our economy needs to change from a logic of sequential value creation to simultaneous interactive value creation. By using the production line as an icon of the industrial area, she illustrates that we have always been used to a sequential way of creating value.  This also leads to the use of value chains: one company is selling goods and services to the next one, eventually arriving at the consumer. But there is no collaboration between all of the steps in this value chain. The customer is at the end of the chain and has no say whatsoever over the process.

Diane believes that with the advent of digitalization, or shall we call it the internet, we have started a period where traditional marketing rules no longer apply. Even Kotler admits that reality is broken: we are witnessing a downward spiral of marketing in which the exchange logic (I supply, you pay) no longer works. This is illustrated by the example of Barnes & Noble, once the biggest bookstore in the world, which is now for sale.

She warns that the solution is not in business model innovation. By making your business model more efficient, often by using the internet as a channel, you are merely accelerating the downward marketing spiral. You also should not try to become more fun or attractive as a company through campaigns, since this is not changing the fact that you do not start from delivering (or living) an experience together with your customers.

For digital companies like Facebook and Google it is easy to make the shift towards interactive value creation or co-creation. But for old brick&mortar companies, this shift is not so easy. Diane proposes a company redesign proces that goes from inspiration over creation to exploration, ending in a new organization. The organizational part goes beyond the borders of the company, since in the co-creation model it is essential to collaborate with the companies around you. Interesting enough, in the sequential economy products loose value when they are used, like with a second hand car. In a co-creation economy, products increase in value when they are used, like with the platform of Facebook.

I believe that what Diane is describing is the theoretical foundation for what more popular literature calls the network economy, crowdsourcing and the prosumer movement. She also refers to the shift from value chains to value networks, from shareholder value to stakeholder value, from self-interest to mutual interst. A strictly analytical approach to business does not make this change possible. I don’t believe she used the word, but I think we need more “faith” than “facts” to let the process work.

A question that remained for me is why we would want to change all of these big companies. Wouldn’t it be more efficient, at a macro-economic level, to let old companies die and focus our investments on founding new companies that structure themselves in a co-creative mode from the beginning? Diane’s answer was surprising: she agrees that for companies, this can often be a good choice. But in the case of governements, institutions and cities you simply do not have the choice to start from a blank paper and you need to invest in them to make them change.

Diane delivered a presentation that was sometimes quite theoretical but driven by experience and inspiration. Companies like “De Efteling” and “Ketnet” already used her advice, so I think her book on Imagineering is certainly worth picking up if you want to dive deeper into the subject.

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