Written by: Filip Matouson  November 25, 2011

Joe Pine coined The Experience Economy over a decade ago to describe our modern economy. We asked Joe to explore with you how bosses could use this concept to create workplace experiences for employees to improve retention and employee satisfaction. Towards the end of our interview we gained insight into why World of Warcraft gamers make ideal candidates for IBM and how virtual reality is going to play a greater role in leading business.

Before we get into the interview let’s look at what The Experience Economy means, directly explained by how coffee goes up in value in this image from BusinessWeek. Then let’s take the model and apply it to a workplace situation:

If the experience economy is all about building a holistic experience for a client to create more value, thus raising income and strength of relationship, are there similarities applicable to workplaces? I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the difference between customer and client and what it takes to treat an employee/freelancer/subcontractee as a client for long term business.

customer

1. a person who purchases goods or services from another…

client

1. a person or group that uses the professional advice or services of a lawyer, recruiter, advertising agency, architect, etc.”

If an employee is a customer then they are there to get the commodity (paycheck) and that’s all they really care about. However, if the boss treats an employee as a client, caring about their experience at work, a relationship grows that revolves around far more than just money.

So let’s tuck in, Kursty Groves interviews Joe Pine on video about his new book Infinite Possibility to ask how in we can develop experiences both online and offline for our employees, thus becoming indispensable to their lifestyles:

Question: Would you consider playing World of Warcraft a positive leadership skill to list on a CV?

Check this PDF to see what IBM has to say about the leadership skills that video games like World of Warcraft develop. The quote that stands out to me is:

UPDATE (Nov 28th): The Reddit World of Warcraft discussed this article over the weekend and left 47 comments on what they think of the leadership skills behind the game play. Link to the discussion here.

Some comments made that stood out:

[–]imakitty

That doesn’t surprise me, IBM has a real hard on for virtual communications. They make their employees use 2nd life for some of their conferences.

[–]Polatrite

ARTICLE TAGGED AS:Joe PineThe Experience Economyworld of warcraft