ABOUT THE BARISTAS

Hosting this series of café conversations are Joe Pine & Jim Gilmore, coauthors of The Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre & Every Business a Stage (1999) as well as Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want (2007), and cofounders of Strategic Horizons LLP.

Joe Pine is the author of Mass Customization (1993) and is working on a new book, Infinite Possibility: Creating Customer Value on the Digital Frontier, on the role of digital technology in experience staging. He is also cofounder of the European Centre for the Experience Economy, based in Amsterdam, and a Visiting Scholar with the MIT Design Lab.

Jim Gilmore is a Batten Fellow and Visiting Lecturer at the Darden Graduate School of Business at the University of Virginia, where he teaches a course on the Experience Economy. He also was recently asked by Westminster Seminary California to teach an apologetics course entitled “Understanding Commerce, Culture and Congregations.”

Our Special Geek Guest
Robert Stephens, founder of the Geek Squad, started out in 1994 with $200, a bike, and a mission to forever change the mundane world of computer repair. Along the way, he became a true exemplar of excellence in experience-staging and our second-ever Experience Stager of the Year award winner by creating a truly memorable computer-support experience, transforming the industry, and growing the 24-Hour Computer Task Force within Best Buy into an international organization with more than 24,000 employees.