Infinite Possibility: Creating Customer Value on the Digital Frontier

I have read numerous publications written or co-authored by Joseph Pine throughout the years, but nothing in his collection pushes the boundaries of business thinking as does this book. Expanding from a realm of reality deep into the complete immersion of virtuality. Every aspect of modern business delivery potential has been identified and explained in great depth. I can assure you this one thought, many more books and articles will follow Joseph Pine and Kim Korn's work, but all will be attempting to stand on their shoulders, if not, at least in their shadow.If you ever had the desire or necessity to take your offering, business model or idea to the farthest reaches of consumer awareness and far into the next realms of the digital domain, this is a must book to have, to read, re-read and re-read again. You can not escape the reality that our world has changed. We, as consumers, will never revert back to a digital-less existence. Change has already happened and is happening everyday. "Infinite Possibilities" is the quintessential framework of the future of business. With each chapter, Joe and Kim take you further down the rabbit hole of possibilities.

Digital methods and practices open whole new worlds of value that can be created for customers. Bestselling author Joe Pine and co-author Kim Korn provide a compelling framework to explore these new value horizons and flows. Joe and Kim also compare and contrast the intersection of digital and physical, and the compelling combinations of capabilities that are evolving as they interact. The "multiverse" has arrived; use it for superb insights and new paths for emerging competitive advantage.- Kevin Clark, President and Founder, Content Evolution and CoEvolvingLabs

I thoroughly enjoyed this book as it builds so well on ideas that have a history in the author's other works but also a relevance to thoughts that have occurred to too few people in today's world. Great stuff.

This book is just so much theory written by a couple academics/consultants who have never really built and operated a successful website. I have. It offers little practical useful information. Although I will admit I couldn't through more than the first few chapters.I gave it 2 stars because it may be of use the academics somewhere.

Great business book

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).

I'm not sure about what to think of this book. It looks interesting to me though I still haven't had the chance to see if the contents are actually useful or just interesting theoretical ideas.Anyway I suggest it to anyone interested in making him/herself a personal idea of how to interpret and imagine the next future techscapes