ABSTRACT

In the postindustrial, experience economy, simply delivering better and cheaper products no longer guarantees success in the market place. Companies need to find ways to deliver unique, powerful, and multilayered experiences to the customers. This requires companies to shift their attention from nouns to verbs, to deal with multiple meanings of products, to recognize the importance of interactions and connections among different resources, and to be relentlessly customer-centric. These changes will likely challenge much of the institutionalized management practices that have emerged in response to the challenges of the industrial economy. Traditional knowledge management approaches in the form of codification strategy and the communities of practices that developed in the context of the institutionalized management practices are likely to be insufficient to support companies to design unique and multilayered experiences to customers. Drawing on the fieldwork on the design practices of Frank 0. Gehry and a leading design firm—IDEO, I propose interaction design as a way going forward for knowledge management practice and research in the experience economy.