Few titles are as carelessly thrown around – or earned as rarely – as "game changer." But Jim Gilmore has genuinely merited the distinction with a concept that rocked the placid boat of the corporate world. As co-author of "The Experience Economy," published in 1999, Gilmore literally wrote the book on experience management, stating that designed experiences are every bit as essential to bottom lines as product sales – an idea that has traveled the cultural gamut from the scorned fringe to the embraced mainstream.

Gilmore followed up the book's success with his related "Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want," which argued that businesses must learn to render authenticity with their offerings. In 2008, Time magazine included this concept among its "10 Ideas That Are Changing the World" cover story. Over the years, Gilmore has worked with organizations ranging from the Batesville Casket Co. to the San Diego Padres, encouraging them to put as much into their experiences as they do their goods and services.

EXHIBITOR Magazine: You wrote that "Economists have typically lumped experiences in with services, but experiences are a distinct economic offering, as different from services as services are from goods." That may seem obvious now, but what led you to the idea of the experience economy 20 years ago?
Jim Gilmore: The realization of experiences as a distinct economic offering stemmed from prior thinking and writing about mass customization. My co-author, Joe Pine, has long been fond of explaining that when one customizes a good, that good automatically becomes a goods-making service. For example, when Dell makes a computer in response to an actual order, it's offering a computer-making service – unlike computer manufacturers making computers and placing them in inventory, waiting for some unknown future person to come along and buy. Or, consider Nike online platform, NikeID, where anyone can design his or her own pair of shoes, and Nike then makes that very pair, versus the person having to select from a variety of mass-produced shoes off the shelf at some retailer.

When we then subsequently and logically reflected on what happens when one customizes a service, well, experiences intuitively felt like the accurate answer. And if both goods and services can command a fee, then experiences too can be charged for. With that thought, longstanding places like Disneyland served to confirm the appropriateness of experiences as precisely the right word for what we saw emerging.

EM: What were the reactions to "The Experience Economy" when it came out in 1999 among economists and academics, as opposed to the responses by businesses and, specifically, exhibitors? Did one group scoff while another applauded?
JG: Most academics were quick to accept our contention, particularly in the business management, design, hospitality, and tourism fields. Economists not so much, even to this day, perhaps due to us writing articles and books for business audiences and from publishers not as often read by economists. At the heart of our work is indeed a bold economic contention, namely that a business's output may take the form of paid-for time which we defined as experiences, and not just in the form of commodities, or goods and services.

Our main focus has always been on seeing our ideas put into actual practice and less so on gaining theoretical acceptance – much like we'd rather see truly new experiences emerge than have existing offerings just renamed experiences.

EM: When it comes to business, what exactly is an experience? It seems like something we think we know when we see it but might have a difficult time defining.
JG: We take great pains to outline the distinctions between various economic offerings, that which can be bought and sold in commerce. For instance, commodities are natural materials extracted and stored in bulk, such as iron ore amassed on the ground to make steel or coconut oil stored in tanks to make industrial chemicals and ultimately soap. Goods are tangible things manufactured and inventoried, such as automobiles lining dealership lots or cereal boxes on grocery-store shelves. Services are intangible activities delivered upon demand, such as a for-hire landscaper mowing lawns or a mechanic performing a quick lube job changing the motor oil in customers' cars.

But experiences are memorable events staged over a duration of time. They could be anything from watching movies on Netflix, to playing blackjack in a casino, to hosting a birthday party at a Chuck E. Cheese. To further emphasize the difference between mere services and experiences, services are what an enterprise does, the activities it performs – but experiences are how those services are performed for customers spending time in some place or event.

EM: Did the book and your sessions at EXHIBITORLIVE over the years produce any unexpected reactions or interpretations?
JG: Perhaps the only surprise has been how overwhelmingly and extensively our thinking about experience design has been embraced by the trade show industry, at least among exhibitors (versus show organizers). So it's no surprise that I've encountered a number of outstanding experiential exhibits at events where I've spoken over the years. I've seen wonderfully immersive themes and well-executed interactions between exhibitors and booth visitors.

Sometimes an elegantly simple design and execution can come off better experientially than some expensive but rather vanilla setup. For example, I remember walking the floor at a trade show for convenience stores. A multibillion-dollar company had a huge exhibit that could have doubled for a slick corporate board room, drawing little attention. Meanwhile, a much smaller booth had just used its corrugated boxes of product to create a three-walled backdrop for featuring the sampling of its wares displayed on a picnic table – and that company was killing it.

EM: Were exhibit managers receptive to your message about the power and value of experiences? How long did it take them compared to others?
JG: Exhibit design and fabrication firms not only embraced the idea internally, but also quickly became ambassadors for experiential thinking with their clients. From there, many companies responded positively, some more slowly than others, and I'm amazed how there are still businesses just now hearing about our message.
EM: What factors do exhibitors often overlook – or perhaps undervalue – when it comes to constructing an experience in their booths?
JG: The one major misconception that sometimes emerges is to equate the built environment – the physical space where attendees spend their time – with the experience itself. They're not the same. The environment in which an experience occurs is just the setting. Experiences occur inside people over time in such spaces. Commodities, goods, and services occur outside people, but experiences are inherently personal. Even in any given environment, setting, or exhibit, no two people can have the same experience, period.

No two individuals will navigate any space the same, always look in the same direction at the same time, or pay attention to the moments with the same intensity. One implication of this is to recognize that while a main spine for an experience can be put in place, allowances must be made to permit individuals to peel off to spend time and attention in areas they deem of greater personal interest. Good museums understand this, and so do the better casinos, interestingly enough. They have a knack for creating places inside places, so to speak, where they can ratchet time up or down as desired to connect with their audiences.

EM: What have the last 20-plus years taught you are the essential components of an effective experience?
JG: Amazingly, most all of what we articulated about the nature of, and elements constituting, an experience have held up over time. One realization has been to emphasize that time is the currency of experience, and that time can be explicitly designed. On this, I must point people to chapter two of "The Experience Economy," in which we specify and elaborate on four different realms or genres of experiential value: entertainment, educational, escapist, and esthetic.

An exhibit can't just rely on exhibiting, at least in the sense of just looking at displayed product. That offers only entertainment value, and usually not much at that. More active participation and a more immersive relationship with the experience need to be present. Think of it this way: There is a fundamentally different experience offered by mounting a flatscreen TV on a wall for watching versus a "man cave" with multiple screens, surround sound, seats into which one sinks, and mementos gracing each surface. Such provides an apt metaphor for two different experiences one might encounter on a trade show floor.

EM: How do you measure an effective experience: an upsurge in sales, increased memorability, or some behavioral change that constitutes success?
JG: I have to chuckle and grin at this. Interestingly enough, measurement is a huge emphasis in the preface of the new hardcover release of "The Experience Economy," so let me share the main new thought. You've heard of "the time value of money." Well, we reverse that, and speak of "the money value of time." That is, the creation of experiential value can be measured by calculating the revenue generated per minute for the time expended by those experiencing any offering. A movie generates about 10 cents a minute per person. Ditto Starbucks. The play "Hamilton"? About five dollars per minute. So, if you can capture the total incremental revenue generated from one's trade show participation and also track the total time all visitors spend in the booth experience – or better, if you isolate the time of just the visitors who make purchases at some point – a company could calculate a return on the time invested by customers as the money value of their time.
EM: Given the prevalence and success of "The Experience Economy," have businesses begun to rely on experiences too much to make up for their shortcomings in other areas?
JG: Only in this regard: Calling something an "experience" when it is not one. I call these "in-name-only experiences," when a business takes some activity it has been doing, slaps the word "experience" onto it, and never really builds anything experientially different.
EM: "The Experience Economy" was published one year after the Google search engine appeared, eight years before the first iPhone, and 11 years before the iPad. How has the proliferation of smartphones, other mobile devices, and constant internet access affected the experience economy?
JG: Well, today every business has the same number one competitor: the smartphone. Fail to attract and engage customers in compelling ways, and they can leave the scene with the swipe of a screen. In one sense, competition in today's experience economy is a battle between spending time in physical or digital space, or some hard-to-execute hybrid.
EM: On your website, you wrote that "Vegas is the epicenter of 'The Experience Economy' and everything in Las Vegas is being exported to a town near you." Why is that, and in what way is it being exported?
JG: Las Vegas understands that if you get people to devote more time with you, they will spend more money with you. And the forms of time consumption in Vegas have extended to or have been emulated in all 50 states. Every state now has legalized gambling, sports books take form as Buffalo Wild Wings, and cocktail waitresses are replicated in Hooters. Shall I go on? And the experiences Vegas pioneered have flowed overseas as well.
EM: Who would you consider to be the "gold standard" when it comes to building effective experiences?
JG: American Girl Place, Geek Squad, Lego, Apple Stores, and, of course Starbucks represent exemplary long-standing "older" experiences. And many newer offerings stand out, like Tough Mudder, Topgolf, and immersive theatre offerings such as "Sleep No More."

When it comes to exhibitors, in general, the better booths confine themselves to a singular focus – a tightly constructed theme actively engages guests in activities they, and not staff, perform. These exhibitors abandon tchotchkes for memorabilia and items that guests, or guests and staff, create during the experience. And these companies usually don't resort to offering yet another lounge. Let me share an example, one which really differentiated itself from all other exhibitors on the trade show floor. It was at a health-care related trade show, and this one company's booth – it was offering to streamline some part of the senior-care process – had a graphic on the back wall that read "No gimmicks. No giveaways. Just solutions." Below it, the company had simply created the messiest office space one could ever imagine, paper piled atop a desk, disorganized file-folder boxes stacked every which way on the floor, and other accents that screamed "whoever's office this is, he or she is overwhelmed." That was it. And the booth was mobbed. The funniest thing was to see the adjoining exhibitors, with their bowls of candy or plastic key rings or whatever giveaways, all acting as poor contrasts to this one standout exhibit.

EM: You suggested that businesses created experiences to compete better, when price and other differentiators didn't work as well or had even become irrelevant in some cases. But how do you compete when staged experiences become the norm, not the exception, for many exhibitors?
JG: In chapters nine and 10 of "The Experience Economy" we describe what comes after experiences, namely transformations. With transformations, what is being bought and sold are demonstrated outcomes or actual changes. For example, instead of a golf pro charging for the time spent in golf lessons, a fee would only be collected for an improved playing capability, or a lower handicap, derived from the lessons. Or a weight-loss company would not charge for powder for shakes, energy bars, or other meal replacements, or even for hours spent coaching customers on slimming down, but for the actual weight and inches lost by using its products or services. Another example: Colleges would not exclusively charge for tuition but instead delay such payment for a portion of the time students spend studying, substituting instead payment upon them actually graduating.

The next differentiating offering after experiences will be to provide a diagnosis of a customer's problem or need, then stage a series of experiences, and engage in follow-through that achieves a specifically desired outcome. So, a diagnostic would evaluate what, if any, change is possible. After that, a series of experiences would then be staged, not relying on a one-time, all-or-nothing encounter. Lastly, follow-up steps would be agreed upon to ensure outcomes – once achieved – would be sustained. If someone finds this of interest, read and reread the last two chapters of "The Experience Economy" These are ideas that could prove, well, life-changing.

EM: Looking back over the last near-quarter century since the book's publication, what aspects of "The Experience Economy" do you think you got the most right – and the most wrong?
JG: Did we get anything wrong, really? Not much, to be honest. Perhaps we didn't adequately anticipate adverse reactions to our call for theming. Maybe we missed emphasizing the difference between a theme as an organizing principle and a motif as the manifestation of the theme, and that they need not be one and the same, that subtle themes may prove more effective than more obvious ones. Just because we cite Disneyland as a well-known example of experiences doesn't mean we want to Disney-fy everything.

What did we get most right? That's easy. Goods and services are no longer enough. E