Creating Experiences in The Experience Economy PDF

Creating Experiences in the Experience
Economy
SERVICES, ECONOMY AND INNOVATION
Series Editor: John R. Bryson, Professor of Enterprise and Economic Geography,
School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of
Birmingham, UK and Distinguished Research Fellow, Foundation for Research in
Economics and Business Administration (SNF), Bergen, Norway
An ever-increasing proportion of the world’s business involves some type of service
function and employment. Manufacturing is being transformed into hybrid pro-
duction systems that combine production and service functions both within manu-
facturing processes as well as in final products. Manufacturing employment
continues to decline while employment in a range of services activities continues to
grow. The shift towards service-dominated economies presents a series of chal-
lenges for academics as well as policy makers. The focus of much academic work
has been on manufacturing and until recently services have been relatively
neglected. This is the first series to bring together a range of different perspectives
that explore different aspects of services, economy and innovation. The series will
include titles that explore:
• The economics of services

• Service-led economies or enterprises
• Service work and employment
• Innovation and services
• Services and the wider process of production
• Services and globalization.
This series is essential reading for academics and researchers in economics, eco-
nomic geography and business.
Titles in the series include:
The New Service Economy

Challenges and Policy Implications for Europe
Luis Rubalcaba
Creating Experiences in the Experience Economy
Edited by Jon Sundbo and Per Darmer
Creating Experiences
in the Experience
Economy
Edited by
Jon Sundbo
Professor of Innovation and Business Administration,
Department of Communication, Business and Information
Technologies, Roskilde University, Denmark
Per Darmer
Associate Professor, Department of Organisation, Copenhagen
Business School, Denmark
SERVICES, ECONOMY AND INNOVATION
Edward Elgar
Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA
© Jon Sundbo and Per Darmer 2008
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

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A catalogue record for this book

is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
Creating experiences in the experience economy / edited by Jon Sundbo,

Per Darmer.
p. cm.—(Services, economy and innovation series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Marketing—Psychological aspects. 2. Experience—Economic aspects. 3. New
products. 4. Consumer behavior. I. Sunbdo, Jon. II. Darmer, Per, 1956–
HF5415.C696 2008
658.8—dc22
2008023888
ISBN 978 1 84720 930 6
Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall
Contents
Contributors vi
1 Introduction to experience creation 1

Per Darmer and Jon Sundbo
Part I Experience creation design

2 The food and eating experience 13
Jan Krag Jacobsen
3 Designing innovative video games 33
Erik Kristiansen
4 What makes Rome: ROME? A curious traveller’s multisensory
analysis of aspects of complex Roman experiences 60
Bjørn Laursen
Part II Management of experience creation

5 The backstaging of experience production 83
Jon Sundbo and Peter Hagedorn-Rasmussen
6 Entrepreneurs in music: the passion of experience creation 111
Per Darmer
7 The urban innovation network geography of leisure experiences 134
Flemming Sørensen
8 Experience offerings: who or what does the action? 157
Connie Svabo
Part III Consumer perception of experience creation

9 Performing cultural attractions 176
Jørgen Ole Bærenholdt, Michael Haldrup and Jonas Larsen
10 On sense and sensibility in performative processes 203
Henriette Christrup
11 Experience production by family tourism providers 232
Ann Hartl and Malene Gram
Index 253
v
Contributors
Jørgen Ole Bærenholdt, associate professor in geography, Department of
environmental, social and spatial changes, Roskilde University.
Henriette Christrup, associate professor in performance design,
Department of Communication, business and information technologies,
Roskilde University.
Per Darmer, associate professor in organization, Department of organiza-
tion, Copenhagen Business School.
Malene Gram, associate professor in Cultural Studies, Aalborg University.
Peter Hagedorn-Rasmussen, associate professor in business administration,
Michael Haldrup, associate professor in geography, Department of envir-
onmental, social and spatial changes, Roskilde University.
Ann Hartl, senior researcher in leisure management, the business academy
CEUS, Nykøbing Falster.
Jan Krag Jacobsen, associate professor in performance design, Department of
Communication, business and information technologies, Roskilde University.
Erik Kristiansen, PhD scholar in experience and IT, Department of
Communication, business and information technologies, Roskilde
University.
Jonas Larsen, associate professor in social sciences, Aalborg University.
Bjørn Laursen, associate professor in performance design, Department
of Communication, business and information technologies, Roskilde
University.
Flemming Sørensen, assistant professor in leisure management, The busi-
ness academy CEUS, Nykøbing Falster.
Jon Sundbo, Professor of innovation and business administration,
vi
Contributors vii
Connie Svabo, PhD scholar in experience and organization, Department

of Communication, business and information technologies, Roskilde
University.
1. Introduction to experience creation
Per Darmer and Jon Sundbo
1 THE EXPERIENCE
The concept of experience is rather new, primarily introduced by two

works, namely Gerhard Schulze’s analysis of cultural behaviour in different
social strata in Nürnberg (‘Die erlebniss gesellschaft’ – the Experience
Society, Schulze, 1992) and Pine and Gilmore’s book ‘The Experience
Economy’ (1999) which suggest that experiences are going to substitute ser-
vices and become the next value-creating element in firms. Experience is not
a new phenomenon as such. It includes activities that have been analysed
and discussed using other terms such as leisure, tourism, cultural activities,
marketing, Internet services and so forth. These terms will be used in
the chapters of the book. However, the perspective of the book, namely
creation of experiences, is a new one. We shall briefly elaborate the concept.
An experience can consist of a product, for example a theatre play. An
experience can also be a supplement to the product, such as a dinner at a
certain restaurant, or the experience can be the whole package, making the
experience not just a product, but a mental process, a state of mind, for
instance an evening out combining dining and seeing a play. The main point
here is that experiences are always more than just the product. The core of
the product might be an experience, like a theatre play, but it is always more
than this: it includes where it takes place, the décor, whether the seats are
good or not and so forth. One can also gain an experience via technology,
such as the web net or watching television. The experience can also be a sup-
plement to a good or a service. It is not the product, but the supplements of
it which provide the consumer with the experience. It is not the shoes, but the
fact that these shoes are fashionable and show who you are, which is the expe-
rience. This is an experience you cannot get from just any pair of shoes. It is
the design, the marketing, the usage and symbolic value of the shoes that
makes them an experience. The shoes acquire a story or a theme and it is the
story or the theme, rather than the product, which the consumers buy and
cherish in the experience economy (cf. Jensen, 1999). The story or the theme
is constructed to sell whatever the product might be, whether tangible or
intangible: shoes, vacations, music, films, food, museum visits or events.
1
2 Creating experiences in the experience economy
Experiences are manifold. They challenge all senses. Some have a very
physical core (such as adventure tourism, for example climbing moun-
tains), others are physically very passive (such as watching a theatre play).
Some are mentally demanding (such as a movie can be), others less so (such
as staying at a designer (boutique) hotel). Some involve technology, often
ICT (such as computer games), others practically no technology (such as
playing football). Some are passive entertainment (such as watching TV),
others are active learning (such as experience-based learning on the
Internet (edutainment)). In some cases, for example tourism, the users or
consumers come to the place where the experience is produced. In other
cases, for example entertainment on mobile phones, the experience is sent
to the users’ place. This book reflects this wide variety of experiences and
the circumstances in which they are constructed, produced, received and
perceived by the audience. The book neither can nor should cover all kinds
of experiences, but the chapters of the book will present a wide variety of
them.
The book discusses culture and the cultural and social impacts of experi-
ences. However, it is not a book on art and a culture-based critique of the
society, such as Adorno (1975) produced in the 1950s. Instead of consider-
ing experiences to be art only, the book presents a broader view of experi-
ences; they also include sports, tourism, town festivals etc. The book
emphasizes that both large companies and small entrepreneurs see new
business opportunities in the experience economy. Technology is also
emphasized; however, it is not the technological development in itself, but
its relation to and integration in experiences which makes technology
important. Some predict that most jobs and economic growth will be
created in technology-based global experiences within fields such as the TV,
Internet and mobile phone-based experience services and computer games.
2 THE EXPERIENCE ECONOMY
So far, the literature has been dominated by an emphasis on experience pro-

duction which is rooted in the ideas of the experience economy as the main
driver of modern economic dynamics. This idea is seen in Pine and Gilmore
(1999), who distinguish between four economic stages that predate the
emergence of the experience economy: agrarian, industrial, service and
knowledge economy. The concept of stages has been introduced earlier by,
for example, Alvin Toffler (1980) and Daniel Bell (1973). The divisions are
not neat – the fact that the economy has moved from an agrarian to an
experience economy does not mean that there are no remains of the other
stages in the present economy. Agrarian, industrial and service products are
Introduction to experience creation 3
still being produced, but the consumers are moving towards the experience
economy. Experiences have a high value for consumers and the demand for
experiences is increasing. Consumers are therefore willing to pay a high
price for experiences and experience production becomes very profitable.
However, competition also increases, which calls for innovation of new
experience products to make experience firms stay competitive. Therefore,
it is crucial to firms to construct their experiences the right way.
Pine and Gilmore (1999) and Jensen (1999) emphasize that the experi-
ence economy is not yet fully developed. They argue that that is the direc-
tion in which we are heading. At present we stand on the brink of the
experience economy, and companies and organizations that realize this
will gain a competitive advantage, as the development of the experience
economy is there, and those who embrace it will benefit, compared to those
that avoid or ignore it. ‘The experience economy is here to stay, it is part
of the public debate, part of the considerations of the companies, in
Denmark, in the Nordic countries, in the whole Western world’ (Jensen,
1999, p. 14).
The main experience industries (where experience is the core product)
count for about 8–12 per cent of GNP and employment and are among the
fastest growing industries (measurements of the experience economy can for
example be found in Caves, 2000; Department for Culture, Media and Sport,
2001; KK Stiftelsen, 2003; Erhvervs/kulturministeriet, 2000). Furthermore,
experiences are sold as additions to goods and services, activities whose size
is unknown because they are not measured in economic terms.
In the earlier stages of the economic development, the production of
products was more or less related to needs. The consumers wanted com-
modities, goods and services to satisfy their needs for survival, later for
materialism, knowledge and solving problems (which the service sector
provided). Now they want to have an interesting life, experience new
aspects of life or new places, be entertained and learn in an enjoyable way.
Customers are now looking for more than the mere product or service.
Experiences fulfil this need.
Public institutions such as museums, municipal culture centres and
broadcast companies become part of the experience economy and are
increasingly forced to operate under market conditions. Many experiences
are produced by volunteers, organized either in associations or in loosely-
coupled networks (for example, rock festivals). Municipalities and other
public authorities are often partners in experience activities such as town
festivals. Such mixed public–private-market based events are part of the
experience economy and result from the demands of the market within an
experience economy. Sport clubs are often mixed amateur and professional
organizations. The creation of new experiences becomes a prerequisite for
success even for public institutions and voluntary associations and groups.
This book is useful for understanding the conditions for such developments.
3 AIM OF THE BOOK: EXPERIENCE CREATION
The focus of the book is on creation of experiences. The aim of the book
is to contribute to the understanding and knowledge of experience creation
and to do so by presenting diverse and innovative perspectives upon expe-
rience creation. Hence the book establishes a more solid foundation for
making better and more complex analyses of experience creation, which
pave the way for developing analytically based and innovative experiences
in experience firms and institutions.
It is experience creation that goes beyond the pure production of experi-
ence that is what the book is all about. Experience creation is a broader
concept than experience production, it captures the idea that experiences are
more than a product to be produced. It is an experience to be constructed. It
is the creation of the story or the theme or whatever the experience might be.
Besides the production the process of experience creation may involve all or
some of the following: the design, management, organization, marketing, sale
and usage of the experience (how the users receive the experience). How many
of these are involved in the process, and to what extent, differs from experi-
ence to experience, but the process of experience creation always involves
some of them: it is just their combination which varies from case to case.
The book is based on the sciences, mainly the social sciences, but also the
humanities and even natural sciences, such as the physiology of the senses
and IT programs. Although the book is science-based, it does not only
consist of theoretical, academic analysis of the way experience firms or
institutions produce and construct experiences and how they are received
by the public (which have been treated in anthropological literature, for
example O’Dell and Billing, 2005). It also provides understandings and ele-
ments of experience creation by taking a broader perspective that looks at
the circumstances of experience creation.
The book emphasizes that experience creation is not an easy task with a
straightforward recipe. Experience creation is a complex matter, and the
book helps researchers, practitioners, and all others with an interest in
experience creation, to analyse and develop experience creation (there
ought to be a wide range of people, as the experience economy is staring us
right in the face). The book does this with the knowledge that experience
creation differs from field to field and amongst organizations. The theatre
company cannot copy the experience creation from the travel agency or
even the film company.
The broader scope of experience creation goes beyond all companies

applying the same process and the same engineering tools in a similar way.
Other circumstances must be taken into consideration, such as the inter-
pretative framework and physical arrangements. An experience is not only
the artistic expression of an artist (the film and how the story is told, the
action and the pictures); it is also the more peripheral circumstances such
as the cinema, the reviews and so on. Experience creation is to be viewed in
a wider perspective, including the organizational and managerial aspects of
those constructing the experience. Therefore, the book includes the organ-
izational, psychological, sociological, technical and cultural aspects.
The book looks at experience creation from different perspectives. It dis-
cusses several factors that can be used in concrete analyses of the con-
struction of new experiences. Generally, it emphasizes three aspects: the
experience, the experience constructing-organization and the consumer of
the experience creations. The three aspects all have to be taken into con-
sideration when an organization works with constructing new experiences.
The three aspects are all exemplified in the book to give a better under-
standing of experience, experience creation and the consumer of experience
creation.
The chapters of the book illustrate the diversity within the field of experi-
ence creation, exemplify the process of experience creation and its context,
and highlight innovation within experience creation. The empirical investi-
gations presented in the book include tourism (towns and family vaca-
tions), theatre, food, computer games and music. In this way the chapters
add an empirical–practical side to the book, as they provide examples and
illustrations of the way experience creation is undertaken and innovations
made within the experience economy. The diversity of empirical fields and
perspectives applied in the chapters of the book improve the understand-
ing, the knowledge and the possibilities of innovating experience creation.
Companies can benefit from such understanding and knowledge in their
own experience creation, not on a how-to-do-basis, but to reflect upon,
improve and innovate their experience creation in practice.
4 CREATION OF EXPERIENCES AS A BUSINESS

ACTIVITY
The focus on the experience economy and experiences as a business activ-

ity shows that this is not a book about the creation of art or artistic cre-
ativity. The chapters of the book examine how marketed experiences are
constructed, developed and innovated, which in a few of the empirical cases
is based on artistic creativity, but in most not.
The perspective of experience creation introduced in this book is a

concept that encompasses all the activities of such creation: design, man-
aging, organizing, marketing, selling and using experiences. In some ways
the circumstances of experience creation are becoming similar, as con-
sumers can substitute one experience for another. Theatre plays compete
with tourist journeys to the Mediterranean sea and staying home playing
computer games. Furthermore, if we take a broader perspective and look
at the consumers and how they purchase and consume experiences, there
are many general characteristics which are valid for all or most types of
experiences. This is the reason for writing a general book about experience
creation. The experience is not only the core (the painting, the theatre play,
the computer game), but also the extra features (the design of the physical
environments, such as the theatre building), the food and drink delivery
system, the web pages where you can read about the experience product,
and so forth as described in Chapter 5 by Sundbo and Hagedorn-
Rasmussen. The sales system is also a part of the experience. It includes for
example storytelling about the product or the firm, web pages with infor-
mation about the experience, and so forth. Thus the experience is a complex
phenomenon with many aspects.
Pine and Gilmore (1999) emphasize the importance of the customer in
experience and experience creation, as they point out that ‘Experiences
occur whenever a company intentionally uses services as the stage and
goods as props to engage the individual’ (p. 11). By this they mean that an
experience occurs whenever companies intentionally construct it to
engage customers. The engagement of the customer in the experience also
means that customers rarely have the same experience, even though it is
the same experience they are experiencing. The reasoning behind this is
that the experience of the customer derives from the customer’s personal
interaction with the experience, as she or he is engaged in it, and all cus-
tomers engage differently, depending on their background, emotions,
interpretations and associations. Experiences challenge the senses and
mind when they engage the customer. You succeed in going through a
difficult activity such as a bungy jump (you ‘get flow’, as the psychologist
Csikszentmihalyi (2002) says). Experiences may be learning as one con-
notation of the notion infotainment, (as much Internet service and broad-
casting is called), as it simultaneously is information and entertainment.
They may also be pure entertainment (‘killing time’), or one may call it
‘un-stressing’. These different uses of the experience that the customer
makes must be taken into consideration when the experience is con-
structed. However, the constructor must also take into consideration
that an experience, such as a TV soap opera, can be engaging for one cus-
tomer and pure stress-free entertainment for another, or even change
importance for the same customer within one broadcast (even several
times). This approach to experiences and customers implies that experi-
ences are defined from what interests the customers and what they there-
fore purchase.
Authenticity is discussed in some chapters of the book. It is emphasized,
amongst other things, in tourism, where there is a discussion about how
vulgar and artificial attractions can be. Authenticity is analysed in relation
to experience creation with no predetermined moral or aesthetic position.
Further, one may discuss what authenticity means. Sand and palms that
attempt to create an illusion of a Pacific island in a shopping centre may be
said not to be authentic. However, a shopping centre is a place where some
of the citizens use a part of their life, thus a shopping centre may be claimed
to be authentic. People know that the sand and palms are not a Pacific
island, but a decoration and illusion. They assess it as such. The sand and
palms may also be claimed to be authentic as illusions in shopping centres.
Experiences are also used as an addition to goods and services and as a
marketing tool, for example as storytelling about the firm, the good or the
service. In that respect the experience is a production and economic factor
that must be constructed. One might have moral or political opinions on
commercials and storytelling about firms, but they are nevertheless a part
of the economic system.
5 EXPERIENCE AND INNOVATION
Experience creation seems similar to innovation, which is a topic that is

very high on the agenda. We therefore need to discuss the relation between
experience creation and innovation. Since the focus on the experience
economy and experience as something special is rather new, the research on
innovation and entrepreneurship in experiences is rather scarce. The little
research done within this field has mainly been in tourism (for example,
Morrison et al., 1999; Hjalager, 2002; Sundbo et al., 2007). The famous and
widely used CIS (Community Innovation Surveys) that the EU regularly
conducts has yet to include experience industries. In different ways and
from different perspectives the chapters of the book look at innovation and
entrepreneurship in experiences from a micro perspective to provide new
knowledge on the way experience firms consider innovation, how innov-
ations are received by consumers and diffused throughout society, and how
new technology in some cases is used to develop new experiences. Such new
knowledge can help us to understand the drivers behind the development
of the growing experience industry and to develop theories and models
about innovation and entrepreneurship in experiences. The book takes a
bottom-up approach to this, by looking at the circumstances and behaviour

of the innovating experience organizations.
The book draws no clear distinction between experience creation and
innovation. It makes no sense to draw such distinction, as innovation is a
necessity in all organizations and can be seen as an immanent part of all
experience creation. Two experience creation processes are rarely alike,
which means that all experience processes to a certain extent are innov-
ations, as innovations range from incremental to radical innovation (Pavitt
and Walker, 1976). Most of them will be incremental innovations, as only
a few innovations are truly radical. They are innovations when they come
onto the market, as innovation is defined as a new combination of things
that comes to market (see Schumpeter, 1934; Sundbo, 1998).
The literature (see, for example, Sundbo, 1998) distinguishes between
three phases of innovation: invention (the invention process of the experi-
ence), innovation (where the invented experience is brought to market) and
adaptation (how the experience is spread through the market). Some theo-
ries see both invention and innovation as the innovation process, while a few
are focused on the invention process (for example, Darsø, 2001). How well
the innovations are adopted by the market often makes no difference in
theory, as the definitions do not consider adoption by the market as part of
the innovation process. This delimitation is not suitable when we talk of
experiences. We will include all three phases in our treatment of experience
creation in the book as consumer adoption processes are extremely impor-
tant for the success of a newly constructed experience (cf. the previous argu-
mentation).
6 OUTLINE OF THE BOOK
The book falls into three broad areas. The different parts include chapters
with the same theme (reflected in the heading of the part) but with different
perspectives on the theme and different empirical fields of application. The
common thread of the book has to be found in its quest for understanding
experience creation and its various aspects, though from different perspec-
tives rather than being a fixed understanding of experience creation.
The experience economy is a relatively new field of research, and experi-
ence creation is a unique new way of looking at experiences introduced in
this book. Therefore, the contribution of the book is to explore the possi-
bilities of the concept rather than to present a completed ‘recipe model’ of
experience creation. Such an endeavour might come in a later book. The
present book will enjoy, rejoice in, learn and gain knowledge from the
diversity of experience creation.
The three parts of the book are experience creation designs, the man-
agement of experience creation and consumer perception of experience cre-
ation (how users receive and interpret experiences).
6.1 Experience Creation Designs
The chapters in this part of the book investigate specific experiences and
how they are designed. Three different design processes are treated, demon-
strating the variations in experience design.
In Chapter 2, ‘The food and eating experience’, Jacobsen is concerned
with the way the experience of meals is designed and how food and the
development of society are related. The creation of food culture reflects
how the inhabitants of a society gather, produce and consume food. In
today’s developed societies, day-to-day meals have become an experience.
Food is turned even more into an experience, rather than a necessity, as it
is a minor part of the average income (approximately 10 per cent) which is
spent on food. The chapter reveals how the eating experience is constructed
and how that creation has developed over past decades.
In Chapter 3, ‘Designing innovative video games’, Kristiansen presents
various forms of video games, and how they are designed. A video game is
a rather complex experience creation as it is constructed in the interaction
of the player (consumer) and the game. Video game design is a combina-
tion of technological development and social fantasy. The chapter dis-
cusses how the understanding of gameplay influences the innovation and
design of video games.
In Chapter 4, ‘What makes Rome: ROME?’, Laursen examines the
complex processes of the individual consumer when he/she is experiencing
their surroundings and tries to figure out what is and what is not of
significance. Laursen illustrates this by looking at Rome and places in the
city and their significance for the tourist or traveller in Rome. The analysis
emphasizes how Rome is designed as an experience and as a memory. The
chapter also discusses the consequences of consumer’s experiences of
significance for the experience industry in general and the tourist providers
in particular.
6.2 Management of Experience Creation
Where the focus in the first part is on specific experiences and the design of
them, the focus in the second is on the creation process and the manage-
ment of it. The chapters analyse how the creation process is organized and
how different social actors participate in the creation. Experiences are
seen as holistic, which means including more than the core experience.
Experience creation includes peripheral services such as the bar in a theatre,

stories about football players as part of the football-watching experience
and so on. The chapters also analyse how different parts of the holistic
experience are constructed and managed.
Sundbo and Hagedorn-Rasmussen analyse, in the fifth chapter, ‘The
backstaging of experience production’, based on case studies of how the
production and innovation in the experience economy have become more
business-oriented and backstaged. They argue that this development has
led management in the experience economy to become more professional-
ized. The chapter shows how these changes can be located in three tax-
onomies of experience organizations and a model of experience production
with special focus on backstage, stage and frontstage.
Darmer, in Chapter 6, ‘Entrepreneurs in music – the passion of experi-
ence creation’, argues that experience creation by the entrepreneurs in the
Danish music industry is infused with passion, meaning that passion is an
immanent part of all these entrepreneurs do. The chapter highlights this by
presenting the tale of a passionate and economically unsuccessful entre-
preneur and his experiences with experience production and creation.
Flemming Sørensen, in Chapter 7, ‘The urban innovation network geog-
raphy of leisure experiences’, pays attention to innovation networks in the
experience economy. The chapter discusses innovation networks theoreti-
cally related to place (local and global). The theoretical discussion is illus-
trated empirically by the case of a small Danish town: Nykøbing Falster.
The chapter emphasizes the importance of innovation networks if small
towns are to stand out and survive in the fierce competition they engage in
for tourists and residents.
In Chapter 8, ‘Experience offerings – who or what does the action?’,
Svabo focuses upon the interplay between materiality and employees in
organizations. The innovation potential of such interplay is highlighted
by applying an ANT (Actor Network Theory) perspective upon it. The
chapter underlines that both humans and material objects are actants in the
complex processes of experience constructing. The different roles and
importance of humans and materiality are illustrated by two cases: The
Manumission (a disco at Ibiza) and Prada’s New York store.
6.3 Consumer Perception of Experience Creation
The chapters in this area of the book are all primarily concerned with the
way the experiences affect and are perceived by the consumers. How does the
consumer perceive and react to the experience creation, and how can experi-
ences be made to fit the needs of the consumers? This is important know-
ledge if one wants to construct new experiences or improve existing ones.
In Chapter 9, ‘Performing cultural attractions’, Bærenholdt, Haldrup

and Larsen underline how experience creation involves the performance of
the consumers, as they are the subjects who experience. Therefore, the
chapter argues that an engagement with the experiencing subjects is part of
the analysis of what ‘makes places’ in the experience economy. ‘Makes
places’ refers to the two case studies of the chapters, which are a historical
castle and a museum. The chapter argues that the two spaces or sights are
performed differently both in the staging (creation) of them and in the way
they are experienced by the consumers. The chapter discusses the relevance
of authenticity in analysing performance in cultural tourism.
In Chapter 10, ‘On sense and sensibility in performative processes’,
Christrup provides a theoretical foundation for creating space for experi-
ences and how the user may use the experience. The theoretical foundation
reflects Christrup’s interest in combining the experience economy and
human development, the economic and the emotional side of experience
creation and consumption. Christrup calls this ‘Space spirit innovation’
and underlines that the foundation is applied both by the professional prac-
titioners in their performances and in the design and creation processes to
create space for experience and experience production.
In Chapter 11, ‘Experience production by family tourism providers’,
Hartl and Gram look at the family as the decision-making unit in relation
to holidays. The chapter draws upon empirical material involving both
adults and children to see what kind of preferences they have for holidays
and how they differ between adults and children, which they do. The empir-
ical data are collected in Denmark and Germany and consist of focus group
interviews with adults and children separately. The focus group interviews
were primarily concerned with the translation of experiences into pictorial
expressions. The chapter tries to identify what the consequences of these
different preferences amongst the consumers and holiday decision-making
units are for the tourism providers (and their experience creation).
7 THE AUTHOR TEAM
The book has been written by a team of researchers from the Centre of
Experience Research at Roskilde University, Denmark, and its associate,
the Centre for Leisure Management at the business academy CEUS in
Nykøbing Falster, Denmark. Since 2005, this research group has made an
effort to research the most important developments within experience pro-
duction and use in society. This book is one result of this research.
Experience creation is considered essential in the development of the expe-
rience economy and is related to innovation and performance design:
design of plays, events and other experiences where the experience pro-
viders and the audience meet face-to-face. The latter two disciplines are
part of the research work.
The book is the result of a grant from the EU social fund, which was
given to develop experiences in the Lolland-Falster region in Denmark.
REFERENCES
Adorno, T. (1975), Gesellschaftstheorie und Kulturkritik, Frankfurt a. M (Suhrkamp).

Bell, D. (1973), The Coming of Post-industrial Society: a Venture in Social
Forecasting, New York: Basic Books.
Caves, R. (2000), Creative Industries, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2002), Flow, London: Rider.
Darsø, L. (2001), Innovation in the Making, Copenhagen: Samfundslitteratur.
Department for Culture, Media and Sport (2001), Creative Industries 2001,
London: Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
Erhvervs/Kulturministeriet (2000), Danmarks kreative potentiale [Denmark’s cre-
ative potential], Copenhagen: The ministries of industry and culture.
Hjalager, A.M. (2002), ‘Repairing innovation defectiveness in tourism’, Tourism
Management, 23, 465–74.
Jensen, R. (1999), The Dream Society, New York: McGraw-Hill.
KK Stiftelsen (2003), Upplevelsesindustrin 2003 [The experience industry, 2003],
Stockholm: KK Stiftelsen.
Morrison, A., M. Rimmington and C. Williams (1999), Entrepreneurship in the
Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure Industries, Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.
O’Dell, T. and P. Billing (eds) (2005), Experience-scapes, Copenhagen: Copenhagen
Business School Press.
Pavitt, K. and W. Walker (1976), ‘Government policy towards industrial innova-
tions: a review’, Research Policy, 5(1), 11–97.
Pine, J.B. and J.H. Gilmore (1999), The Experience Economy, Boston: Harvard
Schulze, G. (1992), Die Erlebnisgesellschaft: Kultursoziologie der Gegenwart,
Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag.
Schumpeter, J. (1934), The Theory of Economic Development, Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press.
Sundbo, J. (1998), The Theory of Innovation, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Sundbo, J., F. Orfila-Sintes and F. Sørensen (2007), ‘The innovative behaviour of
tourism firms – comparative studies of Denmark and Spain’, Research Policy,
36(1), 88–106.
Toffler, A. (1980), The Third Wave, London: Collins.
2. The food and eating experience
Jan Krag Jacobsen
‘When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,’ said Piglet, ‘what’s the first thing you
say to yourself ?’
‘What’s for breakfast?’ said Pooh. ‘What do you say, Piglet?’
‘I say, I wonder what’s going to happen exciting to-day?’ said Piglet.
Pooh nodded thoughtfully. ‘It’s the same thing,’ he said. (A.A. Milne: Winnie-
the-Pooh, 1926)
The role of food and eating has changed fundamentally over the last 50
years in the modern affluent societies of the Western world and in their likes
elsewhere. This chapter describes the change and ventures into the possi-
bilities for developing several kinds of food-based scenarios relating to this
part of the experience economy.
Winnie-the-Pooh demonstrates his deep insight into the significance of
food and eating. In his time, in the 1920s, food was in short supply and large
numbers of Europeans were undernourished, as is the case today in many
places around the world.
Nowadays, in affluent societies, food is no longer a scarce and expensive
basic commodity; rather, it has become a fairly cheap medium for experi-
ences. Food was formerly mostly produced and consumed locally. Imported
foods were for the rich. Today foods from all over the world are on display
in every supermarket at astonishingly low prices.
1 FOOD CULTURE
The use of the concept food culture has accelerated and its meaning has
changed. Earlier, in the Danish language, it had a flavour of high culture.
In other countries and languages the meaning of food culture might be
different. A person having food culture knew about exquisite cuisine and
fine table manners. Today, the meaning has changed to a more neutral and
anthropological meaning of eating habits reflecting the fact that the
modern globalized world has several food cultures. Food has always been
of great economic interest. Wars have been fought over foods. Now the
13
growing attention to food culture has made nutrition, health and the food
experience economy parts of the political agenda.
Modern food passes through a long and complicated pathway from
nature to table and a food culture is constantly being created by the inter-
play of raw materials, tools, recipes, skills and so on and it is formed by
climate, geology, history, aesthetics, morals, traditions, politics, economy,
power relations, technology, knowledge, education and the rest.
Food culture is an important key to understanding a society or group.
‘You are what you eat’, goes a popular saying. Acquiring the food culture
of the group in which you grow up is a pivotal part of your socialization
process. The preference for certain foods and eating habits is the last thing
an immigrant drops.
It is obvious to most people that established art forms like music, theatre,
cinema, painting, visual arts, literature and architecture are natural parts of
the modern experience economy, but for food and eating, the situation
seems different. Maybe it is because eating is a fundamental and ubiquitous
biological activity. This issue will be treated in greater depth later in the
chapter. Whatever, it is interesting to note that the word culture is derived
from the Latin word cultura, meaning the cultivation of land.
From an experience economy view, it is fruitful to regard kitchens and
tables as stages where we, at least three times a day, produce and experience
phenomena with immense economic and cultural consequences.
2 FOOD AND CIVILIZATION
Access to sufficient amounts of food is an absolute condition for life and

human society has emerged and developed as a form of cooperation aimed
at securing a sufficient food supply. We name earlier types of communities
and societies after their way of producing foods, such as gatherers, hunter-
gatherers and agricultural societies. The very process of civilization can, as
Norbert Elias (1939, 2000) maintained, be regarded as the development of
food production and eating habits.
Food is the basis of life and society and most activities can in one way or
another be related to food. This makes the eating experience very complex
and, therefore, the possibilities of developing the experience economy of
food and eating are unlimited.
Formerly, most people prepared their food from raw materials often
gathered near the home and food was scarce and famine frequent. Today,
industry has taken over a fairly large proportion of the cooking and the
Western world experiences an abundance of food never seen before in the
long evolution of mankind. The accessibility is almost overwhelming.
The food and eating experience 15
The development of technology during the industrialization of agricul-

ture and food production has led to a situation where fewer and fewer
people produce food for more and more people. The result is a widespread
alienation to a basic condition of life. Today, it can be a breathtaking expe-
rience, especially for children, to see a chicken with feathers.
Very few people are familiar with slaughtering. Today, meat is neatly cut
and packed and we buy our beer instead of brewing at home. We still need
to have a certain number of cooking skills, but the way we acquire them has
changed. It is no longer the housewife but the media who is the instructor.
In post-industrial society, the fact that a sufficient supply of food is still
the foundation of a society, is obscured. In Denmark, in 1998, the food
supply was jeopardized by a major strike and many Danes hoarded.
Baker’s yeast, one of the fundamental ingredients of bread, especially was
hoarded. Some individuals hoarded enough yeast to bake several tons of
bread. However, flour was not hoarded to the same degree and it might
have made more sense to hoard rice, pasta, canned foods and so on.
This event was remarkable, seen in the light of the development of
European civilization. The ancient Greeks considered bread the emblem of
civilization and running out of bread was the scariest aspect of the strike
in the minds of many Danes. But the knowledge of how to produce it had
been blurred.
A hundred years ago, many Europeans went to bed hungry. Today, an
average Danish family expends less than 10 per cent of their income after
tax on food. This new situation has completely changed attitudes to food
and eating. The obesity epidemic has taken over the scene from malnutri-
tion and the food market has become a buyers’ market.
The consequence of this development is that the search for experiences has
taken over from the search for appropriate and cheap carbohydrates, fat, pro-
teins, vitamins and minerals. A sausage is no longer just a sausage but also a
conveyor of meaning. If a food producer today has it in mind to introduce a
new product he/she will have to answer questions such as the following. Which
cultural codes should characterize the product? Into what kind of food
culture should it fit? What kind of an experience should it give the customer?
3 THE EATING EXPERIENCE
Colloquially the terms taste and flavour are used synonymously to describe
the sensations experienced when consuming food. But in the physiological
literature taste is connected to the mouth and flavour to the nasal cavity. To
understand some crucial aspects of the eating experience it is necessary to
venture – a little – into the physiology of the senses.
The taste buds on the surface of the tongue and parts of the mouth
epithelium are receptors of the five basic tastes: sour, sweet, salt, bitterness
and umami.1 In the mouth and throat we also experience texture, temper-
ature, false coolness,2 spiciness3 and astringency.4 Some researchers add a
disputed sensation of fat (Rolls et al., 1999). The impulses creating these
sensations in the brain are conveyed by the trigeminal nerve and enter the
brain through the thalamus.
The receptor neurones for flavour are situated in the 10 cm2 olfactory
epithelium situated in the roof of the nasal cavity. The volatile flavour mol-
ecules reach the receptors either through the nose or from the back of the
mouth. The signals from the receptors enter the brain through the olfactory
bulb situated just above the nasal cavity. This system can distinguish between
many hundreds of flavours. It makes up a relatively large part of the DNA
and is a very old part of the brain. No wonder that a food searching system
is a very ancient and important part of the nervous system. How this system
works in detail is still rather unclear. The signals from the receptors enter
directly into the parts of the brain where emotions, memory, sexuality and
motivation are processed: the limbic system. Odour information is stored in
the long-term memory and has strong connections to emotional memory.
It is rather easy to decide whether a food is salt, sweet, sour or bitter, or a
combination of these tastes, and find the right words to express the sensa-
tion. It is much more difficult to identify and describe a flavour. The use of
language poses a fundamental problem in relation to the kind of sensual
experiences offered by the olfactoric system. A cognitive and linguistic frame-
work cannot capture the experience. This is the problem of the wine expert.
He/she can easily determine and communicate the taste of the wine, but the
flavour poses problems. The metaphors used are often rather funny, such as
leather, tobacco, forest floor, old ladies violets, and so on. Interestingly, the
flavour is often the expensive and fickle part of a wine.
The flavour of food communicates by reverberating with emotions and
long-forgotten memories sometimes outside the reach of language and
consciousness. Everybody is familiar with the experience that a certain
smell or the flavour of a food may trigger emotions difficult to explain.
Often the emotions are felt before it is realized that they are caused by a
smell. Sometimes the experience can be put into words and sometimes not:
‘Oh, it smells like my aunt’s sponge cake.’
A famous example of this phenomenon is found in the novel A la
recherche du temps perdu (1913–27) by Marcel Proust. The narrator tastes
a Madeleine cake soaked in lime blossom tea:
I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the
cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate
than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary
thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses;
something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. . . . I put down
the cup and examined my own mind. It alone can discover the truth . . . And I
begin to ask myself what it could have been, this unremembered state which
brought with it no logical proof, but the indisputable evidence, of its felicity, its
reality, and in whose presence other states of consciousness melted and van-
ished. . . . And as soon as I had recognized the taste of the piece of madeleine
soaked in her decoction of lime-blossom which my aunt used to give me . . .
immediately the old grey house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like
a stage set to attach itself to the little pavilion opening on to the garden which
had been built out behind it for my parents. (Shortened)
The French Symbolists, among them Charles Baudelaire in the late 19th
century, were obsessed with perfume and scent. And the interest in scent
seemed widespread at the time. Mary F. Fleischer (2007) interprets this as
a response ‘to the fragmented, dehumanized, and materialistic qualities of
modern life’ and ‘the Symbolists’ fascination with the more “primitive” and
intangible senses of taste touch and smell, and their interest in discovering
new “languages” of sensation’.
The modern market is booming with perfumes for both men and women
and there is a tremendous focus on the taste and flavour of food. This
could perhaps be interpreted as a response to the fragmented, dehuman-
ized and materialistic qualities of modern life and at the same time
expressing these conditions as the luxury consumption of mass industrial
products.
The eating experience is essentially personal and is therefore influenced
by the eater’s individual physiological and psychological make-up, history,
ethical attitude, current mood and, do not forget, degree of hungriness. But
external factors like the setting, company, light, temperature and the rest all
make a crucial contribution to the way the food and the eating are perceived
and experienced.
The German sociologist Georg Simmel has beautifully described how
individual eating is a biological response to hunger when, in company with
others, it leads to a profound social experience.
Yet because this primitive physiological fact is an absolutely general human one,
it does indeed become the substance of common actions. The sociological struc-
ture of the meal emerges, which links precisely the exclusive selfishness of eating
with a frequency of being together, with a habit of being gathered together such
as is seldom attainable on occasions of a higher and intellectual order. Persons
who in no way share any special interest can gather together at the common
meal – in this possibility, associated with the primitiveness and hence universal
nature of material interest, there lies the immeasurable sociological significance
of the meal. (Simmel, [1910]1997)
These words of Georg Simmel are put into perspective by the discovery of
the mirror neurones in the brain of primates and the fairly large amount of
evidence suggesting that they are also present in the human brain. Certain
neurones are active in the brain of a macaque monkey eating a nut, as are
the same neurones in another macaque seeing the first one chewing the nut.
These neurons are very important in the process of learning and social
organization since they seem to be responsible for the ability to imitate and
feel empathy (Rizzolatti and Craighero, 2004). This is in accordance with
the fact that the food and eating experience can only unfold its full poten-
tial in company.
Eating is a combined body and mind experience. The body tastes, smells,
sees, hears, feels and digests the food. The mind reads the food consciously
and unconsciously in the form of activated emotions and memories. In his
worldwide studies of attitudes towards food, the anthropologist Claude
Lévi Strauss ubiquitously met the division of the edible in two categories
according to good and bad emotions. One of the puzzles of food culture
studies is why some potential foods become regarded as edible and others
not.
A Danish cookbook published in 1837 states that the smile of the house-
wife is the most important spice (Mangor, 1837). ‘A good meal with good
company is a pleasure; so is foreplay and lovemaking; so is a good shit’,
writes the grand old man of performance theory, Richard Schechner
(2007). The total response of the body is at play in the food and eating
experience.
B.J. Pine and J.H. Gilmore (1999) coined the concept transformation to
designate possible long-standing effects of an experience. The food experi-
ence has a long time effect on the body indeed. Obesity, alcoholism and a
number of cardiovascular diseases are caused by a long row of probably
excellent food experiences. The food experience provider has to face this
ethical problem. A chef may serve a dinner far removed from the recom-
mendations of leading nutritionists. And we can consume such foods once
in a while without problems. But it becomes another story if this dinner is
promoted on television or is served as the daily menu in a company canteen.
Chefs have become celebrities, trendsetters and role models and this
involves an ethical responsibility for the health of their disciples.
4 FROM NATURE TO BODY AND BACK AGAIN
It is obvious that cooking, whether it is done in the home or elsewhere, is a

crucial part of the food and eating experience. But what is done in the
kitchen is only a minor part of the effort put in behind the experience.
The food passes through many hands, processes and machines on its way
from nature to the body of the consumer where it is ultimately processed
and delivered back to nature. Each link in this chain contributes both mate-
rially and immaterially to the eating experience and should be considered
as fields of interest in the development of the food and eating experience.
The contributions of some of these links may be obvious and recognizable,
others may be subtle and hidden. The people working along the chain may
be regarded as more or less visible performers engaged in many kinds of
performances, ranging from the application of technical knowledge to
mere theatrical appearances.
Let us follow a product, for example milk, through its complicated
pathway from nature to cheese and back to nature and let us begin in the
pasture. The taste of the cheese will depend heavily on the species of plants
and dairy cattle. The stories which can be told will be very different accord-
ing to whether it is monoculture grassland or a wild mountain hillside.
Terroir is a widely used French concept summing up the local natural
environment and microclimate in relation to food production. Terroir is a
basic ingredient in food-related storytelling, featuring, for example, the
vineyards of Bordeaux and Burgundy or the cork oak woodland in Spanish
Estremadura where the famous iberico hams grow on the black-footed
hogs.
A story about cattle staying in a stable all year round and eating any
cellulose-containing product a ruminant is able to digest, such as paper, will
probably not be told publicly at all by the producers of milk, but perhaps
by some critical food writer who unveils a fake story about how the milk
really comes into being.
Thousands of different kinds of cheese are produced. The milk may be
raw or pasteurized as it is processed into cheese. Many kinds of micro-
organism may be involved and several kinds of procedures and hygienic
measures may be used and will result in different sensual experiences in the
body of the consumer.
Every aspect of the cheese has a story. Small dairies and big cheese indus-
tries make different stories, and the stories are told in all kinds of media
from advertising to critical reviews in food magazines.
To work positively in the long run the stories have to be true. The
Scandinavian dairy giant ARLA manufactures, on a large scale, a gastro-
nomically totally uninteresting cheese. It is promoted in nostalgic TV
advertisements showing an old-fashioned dairyman crying as his beloved
cheeses leave the old small picturesque dairy in a Ford T. Such attempts to
activate romantic fantasies on false premises are numerous in the modern
food business. It may in the long run damage the image not only of ARLA
but of the whole food industry. Can we trust the quality and safety of the
product if we cannot trust the stories told by the producer? Confidence is

a key word in food experience.
It should be admitted that the modern industrialized food production
line, for some reason, does not produce pictures appreciated by the con-
sumers. Realistic reports from industrial slaughterhouses and other food-
processing industries create disgust rather than appetite. This is a logical
consequence of the above-mentioned alienation from modern food pro-
duction.
The cheese leaves the dairy to be packed, which may add content to the
story. Then it comes into the hands of different kinds of distributors and
the retailers managing the contact with the professional users and ordinary
customers in retail shops. The staging of the cheese in the shops and the
various performances attached to it are pivotal parts of the creation of the
final experience.
At the meal in the home or restaurant, the cheese can fulfil many func-
tions and can be accompanied by several kinds of performances.
All the links through which the food passes on its way from nature to the
body should be under severe scrutiny and be optimized if the final experi-
ence is going to be successful. The culinary art of the most brilliant pois-
sonier can in the long run not repair bad emotions originating from the
knowledge that the lobster on the plate was caught under conditions spoil-
ing the ocean floor. The Danish pig breeders put a heavy strain on the envi-
ronment by producing 27 million pigs every year in a very small country of
just 5.5 million inhabitants. The stench of the slurry from the pig factories
lingers in the mind of many Danes when they try to enjoy their bacon.
Empty bottles and discarded packing disfiguring towns and the coun-
tryside are also a part of the food experience. The landscape shapes the
food and the food shapes the landscape. Do we look at pesticide-irrigated
and erosion-threatened monoculture as far as the eye can reach or is it eco-
logical, small-scale production of great diversity?
5 FOOD IN PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS
Food is consumed in many places other than homes and restaurants. Some
experiences more exquisite than others are created in public tax-financed
institutions: kindergarten, schools, jailhouses, hospitals, rest homes and so
on. It is an obvious task for the public authorities to participate in the devel-
opment of the food and eating experience. It will benefit the users and there
may be good economic reasons for doing it.
The quality of the food in hospitals is a heavily debated issue – not only
the quality of the food but also the way it is served and the environment in
which it is consumed. In an average Danish hospital, 30 per cent of the pre-

pared food is discarded. One of the main reasons is that the staging of the
meal experience is defective. In terms of the overall hospital budget, the
food plays a minor role, but research has shown that the number of hospi-
talization days can be drastically reduced if the patients eat properly.
Actually, many patients lose weight as a result of malnutrition during their
stay in a hospital.
6 APPRECIATING FOOD REQUIRES CULTURAL

CAPITAL
B.J. Pine and J.H. Gilmore (1999) state that a cup of coffee worth 50 cents
can be enjoyed at the Caffé Florian at the famous Piazza San Marco in
Venice for the price of 15 dollars because, as the waiter claims, it is worth
it. The coffee is certainly excellent but it has not this worth for anybody in
any situation. If one just wants to ingest some caffeine to stay awake the
rest of the day, it certainly does not. Listening to the band playing in the
piazza and looking at all the other wealthy coffee drinkers in the splendid
décor might be agreeable, but perhaps not an experience worth 15 dollars.
But if you are familiar with Italian coffee qualities and rituals and Venetian
history and the history of the Caffé Florian and what has taken place there
since it opened in 1720, and you are familiar with the influence of French
Rococo on Italian Baroque and can appreciate contemporary artists
playing with the stylistic codes of the old rooms of the café, maybe you will
find 15 dollars for a cup of coffee a reasonable price.
The exquisite eating experience is a question of cultural capital. It is a
dialectic experience produced by skilled actors and skilled consumers
qualified to enjoy the experience. Jesus Christ argued in ‘The Sermon on
the Mount’ that one should not cast pearls before swine. Seen from the
swine’s point of view, it would be silly to purchase pearls if they do not
know how to appreciate them. Translated to the food business this means
that, if you want to produce and sell a high-quality food product you have
to educate the customers to value it. This is especially true in the modern
market’s cornucopia of every imaginable kind of food of every quality from
all over the world.
Acquiring a taste is a social learning process and therefore providing
food experiences requires a new supplier approach. The supplier is not just
a manufacturer and service supplier but also a teacher and a pedagogue fol-
lowing his/her product all the way to the bowel of the consumer. It is nec-
essary to supply and educate at the same time, especially when new kinds
of experiences are introduced. As children, we were disgusted by many of
the foods we enjoy as grown-ups: dark chocolate, wine, spirits, beer, chilli,
strong cheeses, pickled fish and so on.
Some 25 years ago, a Danish supermarket chain (Irma) imported an
internationally highly appreciated product, namely first-class Argentine
beef. It was impossible to sell it in Denmark even when the price was set
rather low. The customers got scared by the smell and dark colour of the
product and thereby missed an exquisite beef experience. But times are
changing and the general knowledge of gastronomic value has risen.
Today, several restaurants in Copenhagen are successfully selling Japanese
Wagyu beef at astronomic prices.
The wine industry can be an inspiring model for development of high-
priced exquisite food experiences. A vintage bottle of burgundy pinot noir
such as Romaneé Conti can obtain prices close to 2000 dollars at an auction
and the buyer will not even know if it is drinkable. Burgundy is an agricul-
tural product like oat flakes and both have been branded for several hundred
years, but their concept formations are very different. The wine industry has,
over several hundred years, developed a very large body of knowledge com-
bined with a comprehensive terminology and an evaluating and rating
system able to classify the very vast number of wines and determine their
market value with astonishing accuracy. This would not have worked if the
customers were ignorant wine buyers. The pedagogic effort to communicate
insight in the world of wine has been flamboyant in books, newspapers, wine
magazines, courses, wine travels and the rest. If oat flakes had been submit-
ted to a like treatment, grand cru oat flakes from different terroirs would
probably have been offered at high prices in the supermarkets.
7 THE HOST–GUEST RELATION
A meal can take place in a home, restaurant or hospital, or it can just be

the eating of a candy bar on the go. Many definitions of a meal are avail-
able. The most simple and functional is a meal takes place when somebody
eats something.
Food is always delivered by someone and in a certain way. Every
meal has a host and is embedded in rituals. Even the most basic way of
feeding people, through a stomach tube in a hospital ward, has its rituals.
‘Good evening Mr Johnson, here is your dinner, may it become you well’.5
The American soldiers force-feeding hunger-striking prisoners at the
Guantanamo Concentration Camp in Cuba probably have other rituals.
But they live up to an ancient rule of hostship, namely that a host is in ulti-
mate disgrace if his guests suffer from lack of food. Urging his guests to eat
is the duty of the good host.
The host, visible or not, has a paramount influence over the eating expe-
rience. You do not enjoy a meal cooked or served by someone you do not
like or who is an enemy. It is a question of confidence and the history of
hospitality shows different strategies to obtain this confidence. One is the
tasting ritual by a person, such as the cupbearer whose job it is to die if the
food is poisoned. The old duty of the host to ensure that the food is edible
can be seen in today’s wine ritual. The host pours a sip of wine to himself
and checks the quality. He then serves the guests and finally himself (Visser,
1992).
In modern food production this responsibility for the quality of the expe-
rience is distributed among the links of the long and complicated global-
ized food production chain. This may result in a certain amount of
irresponsibility of the operators. Who carries the responsibility for a sal-
monella infection acquired by eating a chicken? Is it the Thai chicken
breeder, the Chinese provider of poultry food, the German slaughterhouse,
the Danish retailer, the public food control system, the cook or the diner
himself ?
A lot of food scandals and the frequent debate in the media concerning
food safety indicate a widespread lack of confidence in the food-providing
system. The official food control agencies which today are supposed to
perform the ancient duties of the cupbearer are far from living up to their
responsibility. This is a fundamental and severe malfunction of the modern
society, which every organizer of food events has to cope with.
The host creates the frames in which the eating takes place, and the frame
creating is an important part of the food experience economy. A McDonald
restaurant or a Rain Forest Café, is not just a feeding station and today
every restaurant puts a fair amount of money into the décor and into what
could be called the script of the restaurant; that is to say, the way the staff
and guests are supposed to act. The restaurant design business has its stars,
such as Terence Conran.6 Japanese sushi and tempura have their rules, and
renaissance food should be eaten with the fingers. The imagination has no
limits. In the restaurant Blindekuh in Zürich in Switzerland you are served
by a blind staff and eat in complete darkness. Madeleines Madteater in
Copenhagen is run by a chef and a film director and fuses theatre, restau-
rant and laboratory in a former 1000 square metre industrial building.
Tickets are sold through the ordinary ticket agencies on the Internet. The
show lasts three hours and is a meticulously planned sensorial experience
(Jacobsen, 2008). Dinner in the Sky in Amiens in France takes place at a
table suspended at a height of 50 metres.
‘Cooking is a language through which all the following properties may
be expressed: harmony, creativity, happiness, beauty, poetry, complexity,
magic, humour, provocation and culture’, states Ferran Adria, chef at the
Spanish restaurant elBulli and a leading figure in the modern movement

of molecular gastronomy. Molecular Gastronomy is employment of
modern technology and science, especially physics and chemistry in the
restaurant kitchen. The term was coined in 1988 by Hervé This and
Nicolas Kurti (2002). Ferran Adria’s 22-course menu is an extraordinary
sensual journey in many dimensions developed in the restaurant’s labora-
tory facilities.
The words of Ferran Adria express a desire to let his customers venture
into an agreeable and perhaps mildly provocative experience. His culinary
language goes to the limit of what a paying guest in a restaurant may
expect. Food can challenge values much further by being strange and scary.
But this is at present left to conceptual art galleries.
The Spanish artist Alicia Rios works in the realm between the restaurant
and the art gallery, making sensation concerts and edible cities, libraries,
hats and so on.7
We get hungry all the time and where we gather in numbers there will be
a possibility to cater for interesting food experiences: work places, theatres,
concerts, sport events, meetings, transportation and the rest. All too often
this is done very badly and here lies a tremendous potential for developing
food experiences. The food usually served at sports events could put an end
to the career of any sportsman or woman. It is very unusual to get an inter-
esting and tasty serving on an airplane. Does the mayor’s gala dinner
consist of local raw materials and reflect local values? The plays at a theatre
may change and be more or less brilliant, but the snacks and drinks offered
in the break are often the same, traditional and inferior. What food would
fit a Henrik Ibsen play such as A Doll’s House?
8 CAN FOOD BE AN ART FORM?
Does it make sense to regard certain kinds of food preparations as forms

of art? A discussion of this matter may not lead to a conclusion but the dis-
cussion can throw light on the creative and expressive dimensions of
cooking.
Carême8 was in no doubt when he constructed his great displays inspired
by his comprehensive architectural studies: ‘The fine arts are five in number,
namely, painting, sculpture, poetry, music and architecture, the principal
branch of the latter being pastry’ (Korsmeyer, 1999).
In European philosophical and even in physiological literature taste and
smell are often referred to as the lower senses in contrast to the higher
senses of sight and hearing. Abstraction is the code word, here expressed
by the German philosopher Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831).
Consequently the sensuous aspect of art is related only to the two theoretical
senses of sight and hearing, while smell, taste, and touch remain excluded from
the enjoyment of art. For smell, taste, and touch have to do with matter as such
and its immediately sensible qualities. (Korsmeyer, 1999)
According to Friedrich Hegel, food could be enjoyed or found disgusting,

and nothing more. When modern aesthetic theory was formed in the
early18th century, the metaphors good and bad taste were used to charac-
terize works of art and the founders of modern aesthetic theory had to
explain that they were thinking of a mind taste and not a mouth taste.
For Friedrich Hegel, the work of art had to be experienced at a distance
and not taken into the body. Behind this point of view lingers the European
dichotomy between body and soul. It can be traced back to giants in phi-
losophy, such as Socrates and Plato, who placed vision above all the other
senses.
According to Socrates, a philosopher must be concerned with neither
food, drink, nor sex (Korsmeyer, 1999). His alleged troublesome relation-
ship with his wife is understandable. Plato meant that cooks divert our
minds from higher things and that it is appropriate that the human ali-
mentary canal is long and prevents a quick passage of the food. This fact
prevents an insatiable gluttony that would have made us victims of cooks
and immune to philosophy and culture (Symons, 1998). These considera-
tions were formulated in Athens, which at the time was a gastronomic
centre without compare (Davidson, 1998).
This way of interpreting the experiences and pleasures of food and
eating lies far from non-European philosophy as it does from the ideas of
the European producers of the banquets in the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance epoch, where wonders of cooking were presented on equal
footing with poetry, song, dance, theatre, visual arts and so on (Cole, 2007).
The Christian church has played a crucial role in the forming of the
European dichotomy between body and soul and thereby the attitude to the
pleasures of the table. The Christian religion has, in contrast to most other
religions, no food taboos, but gluttony is nevertheless one of the seven
deadly sins. The catholic branch of Christianity has a more liberal view on
the enjoyment of good eating, in contrast to the puritanical attitude found
in Protestantism. The protestant puritan attitude to food is a basic condi-
tion to cope with in relation to the development of the food-related part of
the experience economy in, for example, northern Europe.
The encounter between naïve Puritanism and the classical French haute
cuisine is beautifully portrayed in Isak Dinesen’s novel Babette’s Feast
(Dinesen, 1958) where, by the way, the cook is used as a metaphor for the
artist.
9 LA NOUVELLE CUISINE
European cuisine underwent a profound change when La Nouvelle Cuisine

was introduced in the early 1970s in France by chefs such as Fernand Point,
Michel Guerard, Paul Bocuse and Pierre and Jean Troisgros. The gastro-
nomic magazine GaultMillau propagated it.
The basic idea was to detach the cuisine from the stiffness of the
escoffian9 haute cuisine and replace it with a lighter cuisine keeping the
original qualities of the raw materials, putting emphasis on the visual pre-
sentation and being a playground for the inventive chef. La Cuisine du
Marché was one of the buzzwords for a kitchen based on what is offered on
the market on that day and the creative skills of the cook. The chef became
an auteur expressing his values through his medium.
Until then, the menu in every first-class European restaurant was more
or less the same. It might have a local touch and be prepared with more or
less skill and from raw materials of varying quality. But the recipes and
methods were the same and were taught and learned in the cooking schools
all over Europe and the United States. The food prepared in the homes
reflected the professional cuisine on a modest level.
From its introduction in 1926, the famous Michelin Guide could advise
tyre buyers and restaurant-goers where to get the best value for their money
when they ventured into the countryside. In the red guide they could read
where to get the best sole à la meunière and the other standards of the clas-
sical French cuisine. In 1931, this was refined by the introduction of the star
rating system adapted by many other guides and food writers and, inter-
estingly, also by the critics of fine arts in their rating of artworks in news-
papers and magazines.
Around 1970, two phenomena were significant on the social scene in
Europe and the United States. An ecological conscience was awoken and an
anti-authoritarian revolt manifested itself at all levels. In La Nouvelle Cuisine
this found expression mainly in two ways. The raw materials were regarded
as a precious gift from a fragile nature and should be perceived as such on
the plate. At the same time the recipes of the escoffian cuisine were discarded.
The standard dishes lost ground and were replaced by ad hoc creations
expressing the personality, skills and values of their creators. Thereby the
Michelin Guide star system lost its original meaning, although it still lingers
and has a certain value for the restaurant-goers. This system was based on
references to the solid old escoffian world and the new way of cooking and
serving food demanded an evaluation of the meaning of the food and
serving in relation to the intentions of the chef.
The reviews of restaurants and food began to resemble the reviews of
the fine arts. In a way this was not quite new. The founding father of the
gastronomic critique Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimod de la Reynière

(1758–1837) used his skills as a theatre reviewer when being a food and
restaurant reviewer.
The work of the chefs began to show similarities to the work of the artist
as they expressed in their food the material, political and ethic changes in
Western societies – a classic task of the artist. The number of published
cookbooks exploded. Most of the recipes in modern cookbooks are impos-
sible to reproduce in private homes. The genre is the coffee table monograph
of art.
The view that some kinds of cooking might be comparable to works of
fine art is not generally accepted. In 1996, the Danish Minister for Culture,
Jytte Hilden, publicly proposed that certain kinds of inventive chefs should
benefit from public funding like other artists and designers. The idea was
to see what would happen if they had the possibility to develop their work
outside the market and the daily hard work in the restaurant kitchen. This
proposition gave rise to a very harsh public debate and led, among other
reasons, to her dismissal as minister.
Different styles of fine arts from many epochs and parts of the world exist
side-by-side and so do cooking styles. Human artefacts can in principle be
the result of three categories of work: craft, design and artwork. Craft
reproduces with more or less skill the known recipes. Design finds new and
more suitable ways to produce goods. Artwork aims at conveying important
messages of life and death to the receiver. Modern food can be found in
numerous variations in all three categories and in all styles. Seen from an
experience economic point of view, all types of cooking are relevant.
10 THE CELEBRITY CHEF
The cook has become a star and sometimes also an oracle widely used in
the media for many other purposes than just cooking.
There has always been an element of the hustler/showman in the great chef.
From Carême’s extravagant pièces démontées, best-selling cookbooks, and
careful career management through Escoffier’s shrewd partnership with César
Ritz10 and on into the television age, smart chefs have known that simply
cooking well is not enough – The mood, the lighting, interior decoration, uni-
formed service staff, the napkins and silver, background music, and erotically
descriptive menu text all conspire to create an environment for customers not
different from a stage set. (Bourdain, 2006)
This was written in a collection of essays by celebrity chef Anthony

Bourdain. Today it is part of the food-providing business to publicize
reflections not only on the métier itself but also on general matters. Leading
cooking schools such as the Culinary Institute of America, now teach
rhetoric and literature analysis.11
A modern celebrity chef is not just a skilled and inventive cook. The
British chef Jamie Oliver, The Naked Chef, is a business conglomerate com-
prising a long range of food products, kitchen equipment of all kinds, table-
ware, television programmes, DVDs, books, several social projects and so
on. He probably does not cook much himself any more.
11 THE NEW NORDIC KITCHEN
Food plays an import role in the creation of identity, personal as well as

national. When the European nation states were born in the 18th century
they all very quickly established and codified national cuisines. Today we
live in a globalized world and the traditional borders have lost their former
importance in Europe. The new Europe is often spoken of as composed of
regions and the traditional identity construction now seems to be based on
these regions. The plenitude of regional cookbooks on display in today’s
bookshops points in this direction.
The idea of The New Nordic Kitchen should be viewed from this per-
spective. A group of Scandinavian chefs gathered in the autumn of 2004 in
Copenhagen to launch a new kitchen based on Nordic raw materials and
values. The time had come to try to formulate a Nordic alternative to the
imported southern European, Asian, Mexican and other cooking styles.
They published the following 10-point manifesto.12
As Nordic chefs we find that the time has now come for us to create a New
Nordic Kitchen, which in virtue of its good taste and special character compares
favourably with the standard of the greatest kitchens of the world. The purposes
of the New Nordic Kitchen are as follows:
1. To express the purity, freshness, simplicity and ethics that we would like to
associate with our region.
2. To reflect the different seasons in the meals.
3. To base cooking on raw materials whose characteristics are especially excel-
lent in our climate, landscape and waters.
4. To combine the demand for good taste with modern knowledge about health
and well-being.
5. To promote the Nordic products and the variety of Nordic producers and to
disseminate the knowledge of the cultures behind them.
6. To promote the welfare of the animals and a sound production in the sea and
in the cultivated as well as wild landscapes.
7. To develop new possible applications of traditional Nordic food products.
8. To combine the best Nordic cooking procedures and culinary traditions with
impulses from outside.
9. To combine local self-sufficiency with regional exchange of high-quality

goods.
10. To cooperate with representatives of consumers, other cooking crafts-
men, agriculture, fishing industry, food industry, retail and wholesale industry,
researchers, teachers, politicians and authorities on this joint project to the
benefit and advantage of all in the Nordic countries.
To many people’s astonishment, the project has until now been rather suc-
cessful, in the sense that it has inspired a lot of cooks to venture into Nordic
raw materials and renewing traditional processes.
12 THE FOOD EXPERIENCE AS A TOOL IN

DIPLOMACY
The meal is a powerful instrument in the process of negotiation in business

and politics.
In men not far removed from a state of nature, it is well known that all impor-
tant affairs are discussed at their feasts. Amid their festivals savages decide on
war and peace . . . this was the origin of political gastronomy. Entertainments
have become governmental measures, and the fate of nations is decided on in a
banquet. (Savarin, 1825, 2000)
It is highly probable that the merits of the all-time great diplomat, the
French Foreign Minister Charles de Talleyrand-Perigord, inspired these
lines by Anselme Brillat Savarin.
Talleyrand brought his chef Carême with him to the Congress of Vienna
(1814–15), where the European map was redrawn after the Napoleonic
wars. The Congress was accompanied by an endless whirl of balls and
banquets. ‘Sire, more than instructions, I need cooks and casseroles,’
Talleyrand should have said to King Louis XVIII when he left for Vienna.
The culinary diplomatic tool can in modern times be handled with sys-
tematic elegance. When Sweden chaired the European Union in 2001, the
catering was meticulously prepared (Tellström et al., 2003). Hospitality
without lavishness was the keyword. The goal was to communicate knowl-
edge of Sweden’s values and products to important European decision
makers and their entourage of international journalists and business
people through food experiences based on Swedish raw materials, local
menus and meal formats.
The thought behind this initiative was that food and food culture com-
municate as well as other media: papers, pictures, books, theatre, movies,
radio, TV, exhibitions and so on, and that a food linked to a certain terroir
and tradition will obtain higher prices on the market than anonymous
products.
The plan was laid in cooperation with representatives of agriculture, the
food industry, fisheries, the public sector, politicians, chefs and various
kinds of artists and scientists. It was their task to take care that the meals
expressed authenticity and avoided the kind of anonymous international
hotel-chain meals one meets all over the globe. The result was a lot of meals
in 12 cities on four price levels and a big success, but afterwards the politi-
cians were criticized for not having backed up the project sufficiently.
13 CONCLUSION
Food and eating could play a more significant role in the development of
the experience economy than it does today, if food and eating are fully rec-
ognized as being pivotal parts of cultural life in society.
The food experience is a historically, aesthetically and socially very
dynamic phenomenon and so must a food experience economy be. The food
scene changes constantly, like the art scene. New trends pass around the
world with astonishing speed. New techniques are introduced. Nutritionists
come up with new recommendations. Consumers change their habits and
preferences. New possibilities for identity emerge. New playgrounds for food
experiences are created. The possibilities for developing interesting and eco-
nomic sustainable food experiences are innumerable. And, last but not least,
the food experience differs from all other cultural experiences, in the fact that
people get hungry at least three times a day.
NOTES
1. Umami is the taste of broken down protein (e.g. sodium glutaminate, the third spice) long
recognized by Japanese researchers and now generally accepted.
2. False coolness is the sensation felt from, e.g., menthol or mint.
3. Spiciness is sometimes called false heat and felt from, e.g., hot chilli. It can be painful and
followed by a sensation of numbness.
4. Astringency is the sensation of, e.g., tannins in wine.
5. Private communication from nurses at Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen, Danmark.
6. Terence Conran (1931–) British designer, created the Habitat household furnishing chain
and designed restaurants all over the world.
7. www.alicia-rios.com.
8. Marie Antoine Carême (1784–1833) was the originator of 19th-century French haute
cuisine.
9. George Auguste Escoffier (1846–1935) was the leading figure in the French haute
cuisine in his day and the creator of the kitchen brigade system with its division of
labour.
10. César Ritz (1850–1918), Swiss hotelier and founder of several hotels.
11. www.ciachef.edu/admissions/academics/courses.asp#cco.
12. www.nordiskkoekken,dk.
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York: Routledge.
Davidson, J. (1998), Courtesans and Fish Cakes, the Consuming Passions of Classic
Athens, London: Fontana Press.
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theatrical experience in Madeleines Madteater’, in O. Harsloef and D. Hannah
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Copenhagen: Mangor.
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Every Business a Stage, Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
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‘Responses to the sensory properties of fat of neurons in the primate
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Meaning of Table Manners, London: Penguin Books.
3. Designing innovative video games
Erik Kristiansen
1 INTRODUCTION
As playing and gaming are as old as man, game designers have been with
us for a long time, but were often elusive. Professional game designers were
scarce before the introduction of the video game. One of the first mass-pro-
duced games was Monopoly, in 1935, which has sold more than 100 million
copies. As video games are an increasingly important part of the enter-
tainment industry, and as they in various forms both act as experiences
themselves and are part of complex experiences, focus on the design of new
games is an important issue. Video games and computer games are both
forms of interactive entertainment, but where the term ‘computer games’
only refers to games running on personal computers, ‘video games’ is a
somewhat broader term covering games running on all sorts of platforms,
including consoles, arcade machines and mobile hand-held equipment, like
cell phones. This chapter focuses on new ways of designing video games. I
will show how the understanding of gameplay significantly influences the
way games are designed. The object is to look at innovative game design;
that is, how do we design new kinds of entertainment using video games?
1.1 The Design of Video Games
Even though modern video games are designed by professionals, the art of
game design is still largely an area which is difficult to describe. This has to
do with the nature of computer games. Unlike films, they are consumed in
various ways, on a lot of different computer equipment, and the design is
often largely technology-driven. The video game developers are conserva-
tive: the technological advances have been tremendous, but the game con-
cepts have only developed moderately over the past 15 years. Some even
speak of a creative crisis in game development (Crawford, 2003, 93). The
focus has been on developing games using the latest advances in graphic
capabilities rather than developing innovative games for the players. In this
way, we have ended up with quite a lot of shooting, puzzle and manage-
ment games running on traditional platforms and using traditional forms
33
of interaction. But designing innovative games is not trivial. Professional

game design must rely on much more than a designer’s intuition. Often
games are designed by developers for developers (c.f. Oxland, 2004, 44).
That is, the average designer is himself a hardcore gamer. My hypothesis is
that future design has to be based on thorough knowledge of the players.
Game design is the process by which a game designer creates a game, to be encoun-
tered by a player, from which meaningful play emerges. (Salen and Zimmerman,
2004: 80)
Game design is the process of coordinating the evolution of the design of a

game. (Bateman and Boon, 2006: 4)
Design is both the design process and the product of the design process.
A computer game designer must put the work of several professionals
together: the producers, the programmers, the artists, the animators, the
character designers, the story writers and so on. And if something is
missed out, they produce it themselves. Game design is the art of concept
design and of putting the pieces together and making a game out of it.
Various design methods have been adopted for game design. Briefly, the
design process is often an iterative process consisting of phases such as the
following:
concept: this is the idea generation phase;

analysis: background and idea are further analysed. Prototyping starts;
logical design: in-depth design. The game concept is tested using a prototype;
physical design: the design is optimized to enhance the game play. Prototype is
completed.
The process is documented using various documents where the design docu-
ment is the most important; after the design follows implementation,
testing and production phases. Exploring the innovative design, the design
process will not be further discussed, rather the focus will be on how the
understanding of gameplay influences the design of video games.
A computer game is made up of many components: typical game design
books (such as Fullerton et al., 2004; Oxland, 2004) will teach you the
various components that make up a game, focusing on the rules and the
objectives (the ‘game mechanics’). Working with the underlying rules is an
important part of game design, but at the same time this limits the innov-
ation of games. Traditional board games (and video games) all have well-
defined and known rules and objectives. In some games the rules are few
(like chess), while in others they are complex (like golf). But when we work
with rules, we forget that a game has to be played by players to be of any
value. It is true that few well-chosen rules have created good games, but it
Designing innovative video games 35
may not be true that the only way to achieve immersion is by designing with
this fact in mind. Many scholars (for example, Juul, 2005; Salen and
Zimmerman, 2004) understand games as formal systems and focus to a
great extent on game mechanics.
A game is a rule-based system with a variable and quantifiable outcome, where

different outcomes are assigned different values, the player exerts effort in order
to influence the outcome, the player feels emotionally attached to the outcome,
and the consequences of the activity are optional and negotiable. (Juul, 2005)
As a contrast to this approach, I will put forward a theory of understand-

ing video games by looking at the experience of the player – the gameplay.
This leads us to study the player: who, how, and why he is playing.
1.2 The Uniqueness of the Experience
I will present three new game design philosophies, which I find particularly
interesting when focusing on the innovation of new games: designing games
for the market, designing games using patterns, and designing games as per-
formances. Although the philosophies are different, they are all concerned
with the gameplay: the experience of the user playing the game. Studying
gameplay with a particular focus on the player (and not on the game com-
ponents, as is usually done), we will uncover the why, how and who of
playing video games. This will lead us to figure out what elements new
innovative games must include.
As put forward above, computer games have often been designed with the
newest technology in mind; the design has largely, but not always, been
technology-driven. Since many designers have been players as well, many of
them have targeted their games for themselves, the philosophy being that,
any game I like, the customer will like too. This has to some extent been true,
but they have also failed to provide potential audiences with suitable games,
for example for female and elderly players. Recently the game industry has
changed strategy, and started to do research on the customers’ game experi-
ences, and how they cluster. Although making audience models may seem
fundamental for understanding the customers and targeting new products
at clusters, this is a somewhat new trend in video games design, and only a
little research has been conducted. Among the research in this area, we find
the demographic design model by Chris Bateman and Richard Boon, as pre-
sented in their book, 21st-century game design (2006). Additionally there is
work done by Nicole Lazzaro (2004), where she addresses the question, ‘why
do we play games?’, using a quantitative study. Other models exist, like the
Bartle types (Bartle, 1996), but these only apply to online games. Nicholas
Yee (2006) has also conducted large quantitative studies of online games
(the MMORPGs). The hypothesis I want to address is: to design innovative
games, we need to know who plays video games and why.
Staffan Björk and Jussi Holopainen present another view of game design
in their book, Patterns in Game Design (2005). They advocate a holistic
framework, made up of several components. They provide an understanding
of games as a system that centres on the activities of the player: the game-
play. Using their work as a basis, I will present game design as a puzzle of
reusable component ideas. Their hypothesis is that designing using different
components which make up a game, creates better games. I will address the
question: does game design using patterns create innovative video games?
Another approach to game design is looking at the play session as a per-
formance, and designing the game with the best performance in mind.
Presenting an overview of play and game theory, I will show that designing
games as performances makes an innovative contribution to game design.
This new perspective on game design makes it possible to think of video
games in a completely different way. The case history of performance
design is the pervasive games genre, which uses the players’ extrovert per-
formance as a basis for the game design. My hypothesis is: designing games
with the players’ performance in mind makes more immersive games.
Immersion can be considered the players’ engagement, engrossment and
presence when playing video games, cf. Brown and Cairns (2004).
2 DESIGNING GAMES FOR THE MARKET
Chris Bateman and Richard Boon have developed a theory of understand-

ing the players in their book, 21st Century Game Design (2006). The design
is based on the assumption that ‘design reflects needs’. Games are designed
in a particular way, because the users (the players), need them this way. Their
hypothesis is that game design is often overlooked as a factor contributing to
game sales: good games are games that the game developers think good. We
need a discussion of ‘what is a good game?’ and hence ‘what is good game
design?’ Bateman and Boon define good design as successful design, and suc-
cessful design as design that targets the audience. The success criteria of
game design are not how many games are sold, but how well a game satisfies
the needs of the users. Their model is called ‘demographic game design’.
2.1 Genre Models
Video games have been divided into genres since the golden age of arcade
games, beginning with Space Invaders in 1978. Since then, very few new
genres have developed, the biggest contribution to new genres being the
multiplayer games and especially the mass multiplayer games on the inter-
net (MMORPG – Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games). The
advent of the 3D technology brought a new immersive interface, but very
little new in terms of gameplay compared to the well known MUDs
(textual fantasy worlds). Only a few games have taken advantage of 3D in
the gameplay, the Doom game genre and its followers being the most suc-
cessful. The major popular genres are ‘Computer and Video Game Genres’
(Wikipedia, 2007):
● Action
● Fighting
● Adventure
● Role-playing games
● Platform games
● Simulation games
● Sports
● Strategy
This genre model does not help much in understanding the players’ prefer-
ences for games as many games belong to several genres, and because we
cannot assume that players tend to go for a particular genre when they buy
or play a game. Even though the model has not changed for 20 years, it is
still widely in use.
If game design is to target the players, we must get to know a lot about
them. Who buys? What do they buy? How often do they play? What do they
like to play? Why do they play? To understand this we need a model of the
audience.
2.2 Audience Models
The traditional audience models of computer games are a result of the

technologically driven design process that most games are a result of.
Games that were new five years ago are sold as classics now and will possi-
bly be played by another audience than the one they were originally
intended for. Likewise the simple, entertaining games on the Internet (the
‘flash games’, often as retro games, for example mimicking the arcade
games of the 1970s and 1980s) are a favourite of many children and fami-
lies. Video gaming has moved from being for the few to a mass market,
where a large part of the population frequently plays computer games.
Here I will present the simple, but widely used, ‘hardcore/casual gamer’
model (‘Gamer’, Wikipedia, 2007; Bateman and Boon, 2006: 16). Other
types of gamers which have been propounded are competitive gamers,

retrogamers, import gamers and cyberathletes. Hardcore gamers are char-
acterized by the following: they buy and play a lot of games, they are game-
literate, they play games as a lifestyle preference or priority, they are turned
on by challenge, they can be polarized.
Casual gamers are characterized by the following: they play few games,
they have little knowledge about game conventions, they play to relax, or
to kill time, they look for fun or an experience, they are inherently disparate
(cannot easily be polarized).
This simple model is widely in use. It shows some interesting points: hard-
core gamers are called ‘game literate’. They have played a lot of games and
have learned the language of games, as well as gained familiarity with games
that have turned into classics. They are able to share their experiences of par-
ticular games with other hardcore gamers. As a market they can be polar-
ized, for example turned into buying the same games. They do not play to
relax, but as an experience. Casual gamers are game-illiterate (as compared
to hardcore gamers) and do not take games seriously. They relax playing
games just as they relax watching TV. They cannot be assumed to buy the
newest computer equipment, or the newest games, but they are by far the
biggest part of the gaming population. This simple model (Figure 3.1) has
been further developed using market research.
Internatial Hobo’s model shows that the hardcore gamer is the primary
source of influence for the other clusters. They overlap each other, enabling
Hardcore
Gamer
Testosterone
Gamer
Lifestyle Family
Gamer Gamer
Mass Market/Casual
Source: Bateman and Boon, 2006.
Figure 3.1 International Hobo, Audience model 2000–2003

a connection between the clusters. The Mass Market cluster is composed

of two groups: the Lifestyle Gamer and the Family Gamer. The arrow
shows that the Lifestyle Gamers can influence the Family Gamers. The
clusters do not include children as they represent purchasing habits and not
playing habits.
Hardcore Gamers are addicted to games and look out for challenging
games. No game or interface is too complex. Hardcore gamers view
gaming as a serious activity. Testosterone Gamers (males) enjoy playing
fighting games of any kind. They can influence the casual gamers. Lifestyle
Gamers want enjoyable activities when gaming. They want simple inter-
faces. Family Gamers are a large group of parents buying games for their
children, and sometimes playing them with their children or in their spare
time.
Bateman and Boon (2006: 25) show that the hardcore gamers play a
significant role in bringing games to the other clusters. An innovative
approach will be to design games directly for the mass market (the tes-
tosterone, lifestyle and family clusters). This will require new market vectors
and different approaches to gaming. An interesting and innovative game is
That Cloud Game (or just Cloud), where the concept is aesthetic rather than
competitive (although the game is not just a puzzle). The concept is about
dreaming, flying in the sky and manipulating the clouds:
I always wish to make a video game that makes you feel more productive and
enjoy your life better. Most video game today is about addiction. But for Cloud,
it is designed to be something you can put down and go back to to enjoy your
life at any time. (sic) (Cloud: Forming Concept, 2005)
The game has attracted much attention and won several awards for being
innovative. I believe its success is due to its being different: it is simply
designed to be slow (rather than the addictive shooter games), dreaming
and beautiful, both in terms of graphics and of audio – something which
is unheard of in video games. For this reason it has targeted another audi-
ence, and its success (more than 600 000 downloads) may prove that there
is a market for innovative games and that other clusters can be reached
directly.
2.3 Demographic Game Design
The goal of demographic game design is to target the players. As we now

know something about the players and how they cluster, we are able to
point out some design factors which can be used for demographic game
design. These factors are important for the basic design of the game, and
the factors are likewise important for the way the players experience and
consume the games. The factors concern the question of gameplay, com-
plexity, interface, game session and play window.
Gameplay
The first computer games were archetypical games. They provided recog-
nizable starting positions, and goals in addition to simple rules. This is a
classic definition of games, but by no means the only one. And definitions
like this, viewing a game as a sort of system, are highly disputed, as we shall
see below. In demographic game design, games are designed to satisfy the
needs of the players. It is easy to provide adequate games for the testos-
terone cluster, as they reflect the typical game designers themselves. They
are male and enjoy action and competition. This was the first cluster, and
it set an example for all games, not questioning whether games could be
designed in another way. The advent of The Sims has shown the need for
other game types or other game-like activities. This is a group of simula-
tion games which are not games in the systemic sense, not having goals, but
merely providing play-like activities. The Sims is a huge success in the casual
cluster. Even the testosterone and hardcore clusters have games that include
lots of play-like activities, such as World of Warcraft and Project Entropia.
They are both huge virtual Internet worlds (MMORPG – Massive
Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games), where players strive to enhance
their character (‘avatar’), but without the possibility of ever winning the
game.
Complexity
Hardcore gamers, and to some extent testosterone gamers, can cope with
complex games that need many hours of gaming to understand and even
more to master. Also many narrative games and adventure games need a
basic knowledge of how to manipulate game tokens (they require a level of
‘game literacy’).
Interface
This is another aspect of complexity, but not related to gameplay. Casual
gamers like to be able to play a game right out of the box. They cannot
master complex controls, and may not possess the quick hand–eye coordin-
ation needed.
Game session
Hardcore players can play games all night, whereas the game session length
is important for the casual gamer. A game that forces long playing sessions
will be badly received by the casual gamers, as they tend only to play for
one hour. Many small Internet games are played for only 10–15 minutes
each time. Being able to quit and resume games at any time may also be an
important design factor.
Play window
This is the engrossment value of a game. Some games are played only once
and then put away, while others crop up from time to time. A long play
window is desirable, because it provides a longer time for onlookers to learn
about it. As the hardcore gamers are the evangelists, it is important that
testosterone gamers and casual gamers have a chance to look over their
shoulders and get an impression of the game played.
Psychological theory
The audience model answers the question ‘who buys games?’ by segment-
ing the gamers into groups, but we still need to answer the question, ‘why
do they play the games they play?’ Bateman and Boon have tried to
combine the psychological typology model put forward by Myers-Briggs
(Keirsey and Bates, 1978) with the simple audience model. Myers-Briggs is
based on the C.G. Jung’s notion of archetypes and developed into a set of
16 personality types, each made up of four letters: E or I (extrovert or intro-
vert), N or S (intuitive or sensing), T or F (thinking or feeling), and P or J
(perceiving or judging). The types do not distribute evenly over the popu-
lation, and the dichotomies may vary in dominance. The Myers-Briggs
system is recognized and popular, especially in the USA.
It is an interesting hypothesis that personality type influences the choice
of games. However, the work of Myers-Briggs does not determine who you
are (your archetype), but how you act. Bateman and Boon identify the hard-
core player based on the above hypothesis; that is, hardcore players are
willing to spend a lot of time playing games, are goal-oriented, repeat por-
tions of gameplay until correct, and so on. This correlates with the Myers-
Briggs dichotomies concerning what is called IxTJ (INTJ or ISTJ – the
person is introvert, thinking, and judging – the x shows either intuitiveness
or sensing). This may be true, but it is based on a hypothesis of the hard-
core gamer, and this in turn is based on a somewhat intuitive idea of what
we call a ‘hardcore gamer’. Even if we can identify the hardcore gamer
(which looks promising), we cannot deduce that those who are not hard-
core gamers are casual gamers, since the hardcore cluster is at most around
15 per cent of the population (cf. Bateman and Boon, 2006: 41).
The 16 types are distributed by Bateman and Boon over four types of
players: conqueror (xxTJ), manager (xxTP), wanderer (xxFP) and partici-
pant (xxFJ), according to their preference of play style. It turned out that
this hypothesis collided with the hardcore/casual type, because each
segment included both hardcore and casual gamers. It seems somewhat
arbitrary that Bateman and Boon have chosen the Thinking–Feeling axis
and the Judging–Perceiving axis, although carefully described. Bateman
and Boon also found that all the four player types below (Table 3.1)
included both hardcore and casual players. This is somewhat against their
original hypothesis that hardcore gamers are IxTJ; it seems to be the result
of the four identified styles of play. The four styles of play are named con-
queror, manager, wanderer and participant.
Table 3.1 Play style
Type of player Style of play

Progress Story Social
Conqueror rapid advancement plot or irrelevant online
Manager steady plot none?
Wanderer new toys character/emotion talk about what they like
Participant narrative character/emotion multiplayer
Source: Bateman and Boon (2006: 58ff ).
Although this is complicated to summarize, Bateman and Boon found

some correlation between the player type and the style of gameplay the
players preferred. The four types of players are not evenly distributed
among the population and Bateman and Boon admit that there is a bias in
the sampling too, as it is based on gamers and not on the population. The
biggest surprise is that the participant-oriented type is the most common in
the population, but the rarest in the survey (Bateman and Boon, 2006: 71).
If we look at the favourite games of each type of player we get the fol-
lowing:
Conqueror: First-person shooter (FPS), role-playing games (RPG)

Manager: Strategy and construction games
Wanderer: Funny games
Participant: Role-playing-games (RPG), simulation games
As the games developed formerly were based on the assessment of sales, the
best served types have been the conqueror and the manager types. To expand
the video game market it is important to take in a wider audience than tried
hitherto. This research shows that there seems to be huge parts of the popu-
lation that are overlooked, notably the participant-type, about which little is
known. The study also shows that the casual players as a whole often
play the same games as the hardcore gamers (but possibly in another
way). Bateman and Boon seem to have shown that there is at least some
correlation between personality types and gamers, but more work is
needed, and a specific Myers-Briggs game dichotomy might be the answer,
as Bateman and Boon themselves suggest. Another serious problem is that
many games contain a lot of different elements, which may attract different
kinds of personality types. It may be impossible to tell which games you
play when being a specific personality type, but on the other hand picking
out your favourite games may identify your personality type.
2.4 Conclusion
The demographic model propounded by Bateson and Boon (2006) shows

great promise. Contrary to the game industry surveying the sales, and then
directing their effort to increase the sales, Bateson and Boon have shown that
a demographic model of the gamers can provide a new view of the market,
and give a better understanding of how the largest segment of the gamers (the
casual gamers) come to know and play new games. Bateson and Boon have
also conducted a study where they use the Myers-Briggs typology. The study
showed, surprisingly, that hardcore gamers and casual gamers to some extent
play the same games, but in different ways (for example, different lengths of
sessions or for different purposes). This shows that the Myers-Briggs category
of person can be either a hardcore or a casual player, and that it’s not proven
that certain psychological types spurred certain types of players. Further
research into the understanding of psychology and gaming can provide valu-
able insight into game design. The concept of understanding the needs of the
players as needs originating from different psychological types is original,
and will enable us to understand the game market in another way: for
example, large parts of the market are obviously overlooked, or the gaming
interests of those populations have not been explored to their potential.
3 DESIGNING GAMES USING PATTERNS
Staffan Björk and Jussi Holopainen in their book, Patterns in Game Design
(2005) have refrained from defining what a game is. They are more interested
in the practical aspects of designing games. A game can be explained by
describing the activities the player performs when he plays the game. This
gives birth to a model, not only of how a game is made up of various com-
ponents, but also how a game is played. This holistic view is new, and the
authors try to break away from or extend the traditional ludic models of
games (for example, Juul, 2005; Salen and Zimmerman, 2004). This possibly
has to do with the practical aspect they concentrate on in their book: to
provide the computer game designer with a catalogue of design hints or pat-
terns, as they prefer to call them. Holopainen is a game designer himself.
Even though the authors try to present a holistic view, they still understand
a game as a system of some kind – this is the structural or functional
approach to computer gaming, where the state and experiences of the
player(s) are not included in the model.
Playing a game can be described as making changes in quantitative game states,

where the specific state is a collection of all values of all game elements and the
relationships between them. (Björk and Holopainen, 2005)
A game is seen as some sort of machine (a state machine), which changes

its state when the player (or the time) interacts with it. The term game does
not include the players, only the computer code. The players are not part of
the game, but consumers (as in Bateman and Boon) or users. They try to
amend this perspective by developing a model of gaming, called an activity-
based framework for understanding and designing games. This model
includes both structural design-specific game elements and a holistic view
of gaming. However, for Björk and Holopainen, the structural part (the
gameplay) remains the central theme in game design.
Thus, we see gameplay as the most important aspect of game design, although
it has received little attention. (Björk and Holopainen, 2005: 3)
Gameplay is seen as the central structure of any game. Gameplay is what

controls the players’ interaction with the game. Some research includes the
experience perceived by the gamer as part of gameplay while others do not.
This is a notable difference, which has consequences for game design.
A game’s gameplay is the degree and nature of the interactivity that the game
includes, i.e., how the player is able to interact with the game-world and how that
game-world reacts to the choices the player makes. (Rouse, 2001: xviii)
I believe that gameplay is the components that make up a rewarding, absorbing,

challenging experience that compels the player to return for more, time and time
again. (Oxland, 2004: 7)
[. . .] we define gameplay simply as the structure of player interaction with the

game system and with the other players in the game. Thus, gameplay includes
the possibilities, results, and the reasons for the players to interact with the game.
(Björk and Holopainen, 2005: 3)
Björk and Holopainen introduce game design patterns as a catalogue of

diverse types of gameplay. They call them patterns because they should be
usable for both designing and understanding games. The patterns are not
just components, but small pieces of abstract gameplay that can be put
together to form a game.
They not only describe the patterns, but also how to use them and how
they influence each other. Using the patterns becomes part of a design
strategy when designing computer games. The idea of using patterns for
design or as a problem solution method, has been used widely in computer
science (for example, object-oriented programming). The original idea of
using patterns as a tool was put forward by Christopher Alexander in his
book The Timeless Way of Building. Alexander was an architect and
stressed the recurring problems of building. To solve these problems he
devised general rules to apply whenever a problem arose. This gave birth to
the concept of patterns as a problem-solving method, and later as a design
method. Alexander defines a pattern as:
Each pattern is a three-part rule, which expresses a relation between a certain

context, a problem, and a solution. (Alexander, 1980)
A pattern should state (a) when it can be used, (b) what problem it solves,
and (c) how to go about solving it. A pattern in itself does not solve a
problem. Rather it limits the possible solutions to fewer, which have been
tried before. It is still the designers’ choice about which pattern to use and
how to apply it, under the given circumstances.
Björk and Holopainen present a model of game design as composed by
components (Figure 3.2). The framework consists of four related cat-
egories: boundary, holistic, structural and temporal. This reflects four ways
Boundary Holistic
Game Component
Framework
Temporal Structural
Source: Björk and Holopainen (2005: 8).
Figure 3.2 Framework for computer games

to understand the activity of playing a game, the idea being to divide the
patterns into four categories.
3.1 Holistic Components
These deal with playing games as an activity like other activities. A game
session includes all the activities of a player while playing a game. This
covers both game set-up, administrative tasks like connecting to the net,
and extra game activities. Björk and Holopainen’s holistic view tries to
capture many aspects of the player as a performer, but fails to provide more
than a few patterns that deal with holistic aspects. The holistic components
are game instance, game session, play session, set-up session, set-down
session and extra-game activities. I think this is an important and much
overlooked aspect of game design: how to design a game that is part of the
gamer’s life. Or how and when do gamers play games? Even though
Bateman and Boon addressed the problem of who the player is, they failed
to include how gaming is part of ordinary life.
3.2 Boundary Components
This is a model of the limits a game sets. Huizinga (1955) called the limits
‘the magic circle’, showing that a game can be entered or left, and that
special conditions may exist within the magic circle; for example, ordinary
laws are suspended. For Björk and Holopainen, the most important limits
are the rules and the goals of a game. Better than talking of goals is talking
about finishing positions of a game. There may be several ways to end a
game, of which only some can be considered goals. Opposed to the finishing
positions we find the starting positions, which are just as important in any
game design. The starting and the finishing positions demarcate the magical
circle. Special to computer games are the way rules are enforced. In a sport
like golf, you must know the rules to be able to obey them. In computer
games, the rules are enforced by the software, and sometimes become an
inherent property of the game. In golf, moving big trees is impossible – it is
also illegal according to the rules. In a computer game of golf, moving a tree
would probably not be included in the game as a possibility, and conse-
quently it would not be possible to cheat by moving trees. It is a rule in the
world of golf, but just a part of the game world in a computer game of golf.
Another example is chess. You have to know and to obey the rules, other-
wise you cheat. In computer chess the software keeps track of your moves
and does not allow illegal moves. In computer chess it is not possible to cheat
and you do not have to know the rules: you can simply play by trial-and-
error. Video games like chess and golf are not very innovative. Other video
games try not to limit the player from doing something unwise or silly.
Games like World of Warcraft stage a scene, where certain conditions are
enforced in the game world, but leaving as much as possible open to the
players’ creativity. This is a design choice and computer chess and computer
golf could be designed likewise, but this is often considered an extension of
the game design, although it may provide more reality.
3.3 Temporal Components
Björk and Holopainen describe temporal components as the flow of a

game. This is not meant as a narrative flow, rather it is another name for
events that change the game state to another state in the player’s pursuance
of the goal. The player experiences a flow: it may be collecting something,
entering the next level, or a development in the story. The temporal com-
ponents concern actions, events, closures, end conditions and evaluating
functions. They define how the player experiences progress (or flow) in the
game: how the player controls action, how other events happen in the game,
how levels are completed and much more. This part of design is crucial to
all games, particularly action games, where there may be hundreds of tem-
poral components at the same time, and where the experience of dealing
with them is one of the main issues of the game.
3.4 Structural Components
These are the basic parts of any computer game and relate to the software
design of the game. They may be visual objects or other game elements.
Including the structural components in the model shows the practical
design concept inherent in Björk and Holopainen’s work. In some ways the
design of the structural components has nothing to do with the game, it is
just a way of implementing it. It is interesting, however, because the task of
implementing a game in itself is a vast undertaking, but it should not be
mixed with the design of the gameplay. The visual and auditive design of
the game elements is, of course, crucial to the experience of the game. The
form and function component of any game element should be regarded as
a whole, and possibly be designed at the same time, such as when designing
the properties of a character: one should design the visual image at the
same time.
3.5 Game Patterns
The patterns can be used in game design in many ways. Patterns are not just
prefabricated solutions, but rather a generic framework that can inspire the
design of a new game. How they should be applied (a method of using

them), is beyond the scope of this text. Here I will concentrate on how they
can be used when designing a game. Björk and Holopainen refer to four
ways: idea generation, structured development, solving design problems
and communication.
Idea generation
Using design patterns can help explore new game ideas. This may be
difficult as the patterns themselves are a result of a special way of under-
standing games, that is, a functional view of games. Games outside this
view, or games where the gameplay plays a minor role, may not benefit from
Björk and Holopainen’s patterns. They suggest, as a design method, trying
out random patterns as an unstructured way of generating new ideas – a
kind of brainstorm. Another way is to analyse existing games to under-
stand what they are made up of – a kind of reverse design process.
Development of game concepts

When the concept of a new game has been developed, patterns can be used
to structure parts of the game. The use of patterns can ‘tighten’ the design
clarifying the gameplay. This gives a controlled and effective design which
is easier to understand. Introducing designs can also help achieve the goals
of the concept: having designed the concept does not mean that you know
how to implement it as gameplay. Here the patterns are probably most
valued.
Problem solving
Problems in the game design can be amended by discussing various alter-
native patterns. It may even be possible to simulate various solutions pro-
vided by the patterns, to assess which is the best.
Communication
Patterns can be used as a ‘game language’. Discussing games and game
design using patterns may be more precise. It can also be used in the early
phase of concept development as a way of specifying which kind of game
one wants to develop.
3.6 Conclusion
Game patterns are a kind of framework which can be used in game design.
They describe elements of gameplay, and how they can be used. At the
same time, they also enforce a view of game design as built from compo-
nents, which can be changed, added or removed. Game design is seen as a
system of components fitting together in an activity-based framework

model. The innovative aspect is that it offers a precise language for talking
game design and understanding games as frameworks. For patterns to be
of any use, they must be well-defined and able to be combined. This limits
our view of video games as structured games with rules and goals, but, as
we have seen, play activity is an important part of modern games like The
Sims. The free play aspect is more difficult to describe as patterns. In Björk
and Holopainen’s view a video game is not a piece of art (as in Costikyan,
1994) or a performance (as in Schechner, 2002).
4 DESIGNING GAMES AS PERFORMANCES
4.1 Performance Theory
Another way of designing games is to understand them from a performance

theoretical point of view. The term performance (in this understanding)
originated in the 1960s art movement, challenging the view of traditional
theatre, and has since developed into a broader understanding of these phe-
nomena, sometimes called art-performance. These are typically opposed to
theatre performances and of a non-representational nature. If we look at the
concept of performance, it can be defined as follows:
All the activity of an individual which occurs during a period marked by his con-
tinuous presence before a particular set of observers and which has some
influence on the observers. (Goffman, 1959)
Theatrical performances are performance phenomena communicated to a col-

lective addressee, the audience (physically present at the reception, at the very
moment of their production (transmission)). (de Marinis, 2004)
For many scholars, including Goffman and de Marinis, a performance

centres on a desire to change or transform other people physically present,
and possibly oneself. Both Goffman and de Marinis understood perform-
ances in a theatrical sense: the world as a stage. This view has also been
applied to video games (e.g. Sandvik, 2005).
If we look at performance theatre (art performances, happenings and the
rest), a performer is regarded as a person who shows aspects of his life – the
performer may not be acting. The representational theatre can be regarded
as voluntary but artificial, whereas the performance (in this understanding)
is real, concurrent and may be necessary to perform for the performer (cf.
Jappe, 1993). The performer in a theatre must obey the text and the direc-
tor, but it is not necessary for him to perform the part (he does not create it),
rather, he recreates it. The performer in happenings and art performances

performs because he feels he has to. If we look at a game as a performance,
the gamers play the game because they like to, and possibly also to win. A
game performance is voluntary and creative and, as such, shares many
aspects with an art performance, like a happening.
Fundamentally, the problem with the theatre metaphor (both represen-
tational and presentational theatre) is the concept of some hidden text that
the performance is based on. The concept of text (even in the broadest pos-
sible understanding) leads to a possible textual analysis or textual under-
standing of the performance (cf. de Marinis, 2004). A game performance is
not based on some script and should not be considered as such, as some
game scholars understand video games, such as ergodic text (Aarseth,
1997). The gamers are not actors, and the primary purpose of gaming is
not playing a part, but either winning or having fun (or both). A game is
highly interactive and based on various rules. Even if one would like to con-
sider rules of a game as the text of a game performance, this is problematic
as rules of games are not treated as a text: rather, they set the scope of the
game and can be constantly questioned during the game, as they usually are
in a game performance. The rules may not even be known by the players,
or only in part. We cannot restrict our view of video games to the study of
what is on the CD (viz. what is produced by the game designers). We have
to look at the video game in terms of how and possibly why it is being
played. The game in the box is only a meagre product telling us very little
about how it is performed and how it is understood and experienced by the
player(s). The many ways interactivity and the other players have a marked
influence over a game performance makes it different from any text-based
concept. To understand video gaming as a performance, we must base it on
its own performance concept: the game performance.
In performance theory, playing is a central theme, together with rituals.
It can be said that playing and rituals ‘permeate’ performances (Schechner,
2002: 42). This means that ritual and play are closely related and possibly
a foundation for all other performances. ‘Play is neither serious nor real’
(Bial, 2004), but a make-believe, where gamers perform some ritual. The
tight coupling between play and ritual can be put this way:
In performance studies, play is understood as the force of uncertainty which

counterbalances the structure provided by ritual. Where ritual depends on rep-
etition, play stresses the innovation and creativity. (Bial, 2004: 115)
[. . .] play must serve something which is not play. (Huizinga, 1955)
I view play as the underlying element of creativity in all games, while ritual
(repetition) provides the necessary structure for players to excel and to
provide challenge. Games are structured performances, the skeleton being

the underlying rules (the ‘game mechanics’) or the frame set by the rules.
The special thing about games is the inclusion of a competition element,
which makes it possible to compare performances and ultimately to win or
lose. Competition requires an agreed starting point (or points) and an
agreed way of winning (or losing). In this way games can be understood as
performances based on (a) rules (or a setting: ‘the magical circle’), (b) start-
ing position(s), and (c) winning position(s).
Rules permit players to move from start to finish in a well structured
manner. This simple model permits us to view a game as a formal state
machine (cf. Juul, 2005; Björk and Holopainen, 2005), but also leads to
difficulties explaining games which are less formal and more play-like. Juul
simply defines game activity which is less formal as playing as opposed to
gaming. From a performance point of view it seems difficult to regard
‘game’ and ‘play’ as discrete entities; rather they form a continuum, what
game theorist Roger Caillois terms the paidea–ludus continuum (Caillois,
1961). Some games are simply more archetypical games than others and
vice versa for playing. It seems that both games and playing have rules,
though the rules are of a different kind. I will call them formal rules (‘ludus
rules’) and informal rules (‘paidea rules’). Both games and playing can have
both kinds of rules, but the purpose of the rules is different. Formal rules
exist so as to make it possible to move from the starting position(s) to the
winning position(s), that is, completing the game as either a winner or a
loser. Informal rules exist as a boundary between the activity and the sur-
rounding world. The informal rules define the scope of the performance. If
you do not obey the informal rules while playing, you are are either placing
yourself outside the activity or you are questioning the activity as a game
or trying to change it. If you do not obey the formal rules you are cheating
(or again, questioning the rules, Juul (2005) states that the game is sus-
pended until the rules are agreed). The configuration of formal and infor-
mal rules defines the underlying skeleton of a game performance. A
happening (cf. Kaprow, 1996) is configured by the specific absence of formal
rules, but using a lot of informal rules; that is, it should be close to every-
day life, with no spectators and so on. This shows, not surprisingly, that a
happening is closer to playing than gaming.
I will put forward a definition of games based on performance theory. A
game performance is defined as a combination of the following:
● players and their experience of playing,

● spectators (may be the player(s)) and their experience of the game,
● space and game artefacts,
● time and game time,
● play (informal rules, creativity),

● ritual (formal rules, repetition),
● starting position(s) (optional),
● completing positions: (optional),
winning position(s) including valorization
losing position(s) (depending on how winning and losing are
defined).
This leads to a new definition of gameplay as the experience of the indi-

vidual when participating in a game: Gameplay is how the player uses the
game to feel successful, in control and immersed in the playing activity.
This is close to the notion of flow described by Csikszentmihalyi (1990),
but gameplay describes how the elements of the game put the player in the
flow-like state. The elements are the components described by Björk and
Holopainen above, and include rules, graphics, characters, story, sound,
goals, other players and so on. The game performance defines the magical
circle of a game and allows for a wide spectrum of playing/game-like activ-
ities, because of the four elements: play and ritual, in addition to the optional
starting and completing positions. In contrast to other views on games, I will
put the player(s) in the centre of the game performance: everything has to be
designed to motivate the optimum player performance. The creativity of the
players is the source of the informal rules, while the formal rules are given by
a common authority. Games will always have some formal rules, but in some
game types they may not be known in full or at all, when the game starts. In
game performances formal rules will be less important according to the way
you interpret and perform the game. In some games, the players must rely on
informal rules (such as hints), to help discovering the formal rules. To this
class of games belong reality games. These are games based on real life and
often take place in ordinary (urban) settings. One of the challenges in these
games (and other meta-games) is to uncover the rules and possibly also the
goal – this is actually a process of uncovering or defining the magical circle.
All games are performances, but they can be analysed in different ways.
Schechner (2002) distinguishes between ‘is’ performance, and ‘as’ perfor-
mance. A gamer performance ‘is’ performance, when he is aware that he is
performing, for example acting, whereas Schechner calls it ‘as’ performance
when his behaviour during gaming is acting-like, more theatrical or more
extrovert. A typical gamer playing a typical video game is also performing,
but is usually not aware or conscious that he is doing so. When computer
games are moved out into the public sphere, it is more as though the gamer
will become aware that he is playing: the ‘is’ performance element becomes
stronger. The performance element becomes stronger because of the public
sphere: spectators, using your body, and so on.
Performances can be analysed in several ways; one of them is looking at

the various roles players (and other participants) assign themselves and
others. Even a gamer playing an ordinary video game can perform more
extrovertly in several ways. McGonigal (2005) calls it Vectors of High
Performance Gameplay, and identifies six vectors of gamers’ performance:
● Embodied performance: testing the physical limits of your body.

● Cybernetic performance: showing off your mastery of an interactive
system.
● Spectacular performance: generating attention and attracting an
audience by any means necessary.
● Expressive performance: broadcasting your personal identity.
● Talent-based performance: using your body, as an artistic instrument.
● Dramatic performance: visibly making-believe, acting ‘as if’ the game
stakes are real. (McGonigal, 2005)
Of course the kind of performance varies from game to game. While the
performance element is little in Tetris-like games, it seems to be the main
element in many MMORPG’s, like The Sims Online (where you perform
through your avatar). But even with Tetris it is possible for the player to
make an extrovert performance, for example moving and rotating the
blocks at an amazing speed (cybernetic performance), singing part of an
opera while playing (spectacular performance), and to cry each time a
block is misplaced (dramatic performance).
4.2 Pervasive Games
Among games that attract a high degree of extrovert performance is the

new genre, pervasive games. This is a game genre that deliberately extends
or modifies the usual understanding of a game. The magical circle that
defines a game is ‘blurred’. In several ways the game world can be ‘mixed’
with the real world. This ‘blurring’ can be done at least spatially, socially
and temporally (Montola, 2005). It is a modification or extension of the
game performance defined above. Games can also be extended by varying
or changing the rules and completing positions during the game. Pervasive
games extend the usual definitions of a game in different ways. Spatial
extension is bringing the game out into the real world, playing it using the
city as the game world. Social extension can be obtained by inviting new
players during the game or by making collaboration with non-players nec-
essary. Stretching a game over several weeks is an example of temporal
extension. The blurring of the magical circle with the real world changes
the performances of the players compared to usual video games. The
players use their bodies, their orientation in the world, and their imagina-
tion creating immersive game experiences in a new way. The performance
of the individual player and the collaboration with other players become
the most important aspects in pervasive games and when understanding
games as performances.
4.3 Social Extension
Another way of analysing gamers as performers is by looking at the roles

they are playing, and how they assign and change roles during the game.
Pervasive games can be socially expandable: as the games are played in
public spheres, not only players are present but also other people, such as
spectators. It is possible to design the game so that new players are invited
during the game, while others may leave it. Montola and Waern (2006)
identify four roles: the player (he knows that he is participating), the non-
player (he is part of the game, but does not have a goal in common with
the players), the spectators (may help or hinder the players) and the
bystander (has no intention to participate). Designing the games as
socially expandable can make the game immersive, because nobody (not
even the proper players) knows who is participating, and who is not. This
forces the players to collaborate and communicate with other players and
even non-players. The line (the magic circle – Huizinga, 1955) between
what is part of the game and what is not is blurred, paving the way for a
designed artistic experience. These games are often called reality games or
alternate reality games and are a subcategory of pervasive games. They
are centred on several, often innocent-looking, web pages and other
media using puzzle-like activities, sometimes in close collaboration with a
movie or video game. Montola and Waern (2006) have developed this
concept into four different kinds of invitation: (a) invitation to play,
(b) invitation to participate, (c) invitation to spectatorship, and (d) invita-
tion to refuse.
These four invitation strategies correspond to the four roles mentioned
above. Using invitation strategies, reality games make themselves known.
The game itself is hidden (the ludic experience is first revealed when you
participate), you can refuse an invitation, but then you may never discover
that a game was going on. In The A.I. Game players are invited through
watching a movie trailer (Szulborski, 2005). In Whirling Dervishes (flash
mob in San Francisco), the gameplay included inviting as many people to
dance as possible (invitation to participate), and in Killer (Montola
and Waern, 2006) the players tried to avoid spectators so as to conduct
their murders without witnesses (invitation to spectators). The invitation
strategies of socially expandable games can be studied further, in particular
developing design structures for games and studying how to invite non-
gamers without intruding on their privacy.
An example of a large alternate reality game is the I Love Bees, which was
staged and played in 2004. It was not announced as a game at all, but
merely ‘played’ by players finding and connecting clues scattered in plastic
honey bears, web pages and movie trailers. To play the game, the players
collected and discussed material from various web sites, and interacted with
the game in unexpected ways, such as by answering pay phones. Some clues
pointed to an innocent-looking web site, www.ilovebees.com, which, apart
from advertising honey, also changed appearance, sometimes showing
strange codes. Some codes turned out to be a lot of GPS coordinates and
a counter counting down to a specific date and time. The positions were
scattered all over the US, and attracted people’s curiosity. They went out
with their GPS gear to the locations and tried to figure out what they had
in common – a massive collaborative effort. As nothing in common could
be found, people assumed that being there, and watching on the specific
date, might lead them to a clue. It turned out that there was a pay phone at
each coordinate, and that a spoken message, with a clue, was delivered on
all the pay phones on the date stated on the home page. This was the non-
game-like start of what certainly developed into a complex narrative and
game experience. The goal of the game turned out to be unearthing a
complex story and in the end deactivating the ‘sterilization’ sequences of
the Halo installation, which in turn is part of another computer game story
(the Halo 2). I Love Bees was awarded the Game Developers Choice Award
for innovation in 2005.
4.4 Conclusion
Understanding games as performances develops another perspective on

games. The traditional ludic component – the narrow understanding of
gameplay – is not the core of a pervasive game. Rather the perspective shifts
to the players’ experience, the game merely motivating the players to
perform. Any game requires the players to perform, but pervasive games
deliberately put the performance in the centre. This is done by designing the
game to extend, blur or break the magical circle. For Caillois, Huizinga and
many others, the magic circle defines the game in terms of rules, space, time
and players (to name some factors). In pervasive games, the game mechan-
ics is not insignificant and can be very complex, but the way the game is
designed to spread over time and space, and how it includes people, is the
main issue. The aim of pervasive games is to make people perform and col-
laborate. This can take the form of using the body in unexpected ways, or
by focusing on extending the game. Extending the games socially can be
done by introducing various collaborative tasks, requiring the players to

work together or to invite non-players to join. Extending games temporally
can be done by making them part of daily life, and by providing the games
with a story that stretches over a long time. Games can be expanded spa-
tially by integrating public space in the game. This can be done by making
the gamers use the city as part of the game, possibly augmenting it using a
designed virtual world which in some ways correspond with the real city.
5 INNOVATION IN VIDEO GAME DESIGN
My main hypothesis was that designing unique and innovative games

depends on our understanding of video games and how they are played. I
have presented three different approaches to video game design. These
approaches are different, not as design methods, which is not the issue here,
but as a way of understanding what a video game is. It is the understand-
ing of video games that enables us to design new experiences with games.
To gain a better understanding we need to study the area further. The three
views I have presented point out three roads to innovative design of video
games.
Bateman and Boon present their Demographic game design, which is a
model of the audience combined with the psychological types presented by
Myers-Briggs. Their study demonstrates that the traditional video game
only targets a minor part of the population. Their audience model shows
the ‘game-literate’ hardcore gamers and the casual gamers who play for
fun. This, combined with the psychological model, shows that most games
are targeted at introvert hardcore gamers, and that we know next to nothing
about the majority of the population’s game habits. That is, we do not know
why they play video games, and possibly why a lot of people do not play
video games at all. Bateman and Boon’s model suggests that it has some-
thing to do with their psychological type and the games available. This sug-
gests that there is room for innovating new games and game genres which
are targeted at these segments. But Bateman and Boon’s model leaves a lot
of questions to be asked, and further study and development of the model
is necessary.
Understanding video games as a structure of patterns provides us with
an understanding of games as a collection of ideas. Each idea or compo-
nent can be subject to innovation. Björk and Holopainen’s work develops
a holistic understanding of video games. They have provided us with a lot
of patterns, each describing a situation in a game. Innovation benefits from
this by providing the game designers with a common language and new
games can be developed by combining the different patterns in unexpected
ways, or by inventing new patterns and sharing them with others. The pat-
terns themselves may be simple, but combining them is what makes the
approach innovative. The patterns are concerned with the traditional
understanding of gameplay, and focus a lot on what is often known as game
mechanics (the rules of a game). There is, however, room for introducing
patterns which include some of the research by Bateman and Boon. This
could be developed as patterns including game elements for specific psy-
chological types.
When designing video games as performances a new world of game ideas
opens up. The performance perspective focuses exclusively on the experi-
ence of the player, including socializing, moving around, grief, happiness
and so on. The game experience is often what is called gameplay, but
usually gameplay is treated as a vague overall idea of how compelling a
game is or as a description of how a game is played. The performance per-
spective takes gameplay seriously and provides innovation in game design
by focusing on the player, as a performer, and on the game, as an instru-
ment, setting the scene for the performance. When the performance is a
result of playing the game, game design becomes the art of designing a per-
formance, through the means of a game. That people perform when they
play has been acknowledged for some time, but we need an understanding
of the different kinds of performance spurred by different kinds of games.
Traditional video games provide a kind of introverted performance, as rec-
ognized by Bateman and Boon, while pervasive games often require the
gamers to perform in public. These kinds of games clearly aim at more
extrovert performance and are possibly best enjoyed by extrovert persons,
who might not find enjoyment playing traditional video games. The perva-
sive game genre has a potential for innovating games which reach the audi-
ence by new means. They will become part of many other experiences, not
only museums, attractions and fun parks, but also in unexpected mixes of
virtual and physical spaces, like art projects. The pervasive games genre has
also shown its strength as a means of massive collaboration.
Video games are an important form of interactive entertainment and the
success of future video games depends on the innovation of the game
industry. I have shown three different understandings of video games (and
gameplay), and that each view contributes to innovation in the design of
new games. The hypothesis put forward at the beginning of this chapter can
be summarized as follows: innovative game design requires an understanding
of the players: who play, why do they play, and how do they play. I have shown
that we know relatively little about the players and that there is a great
potential for developing innovative games. I have also shown that we need
a new understanding of gameplay and that defining gameplay as an experi-
ence, that can be created by the game, may help create innovative games.
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4. What makes Rome: ROME? A
curious traveller’s multisensory
analysis of aspects of complex
Roman experiences
Bjørn Laursen*
1 INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this chapter is to examine fundamental hermeneutic ques-

tions of central importance to the modern experience industry. We live our
different and individual lives as particular bodies in particular surround-
ings. Equipped with sophisticated multisensory capacities, we are in a posi-
tion to gain rich multimodal experiences. The modern individual is in a
certain sense an equilibrist in experiencing his or her surrounding environ-
ment, a process that involves complex processes of signification.
It is the contention of this chapter that some knowledge of those com-
plexities is a condition for commercial success in the experience industry in
general and the tourist industry in particular.
2 THE STORY AND THE VIEW OF THE SEVEN HILLS
The terrace of the hotel ‘Genio’ near the beautiful Piazza Navona offers a
spectacular view of Rome and some of the seven hills around which the city
has famously been built. The spectator is surrounded by an up and down-
hill landscape of the Italian capital.
A roof with the view of the immediate cityscape is a feature of many
Roman buildings. This particular building is close to the central river, ’The
Tiber’, over which there are several very impressive bridges.
Probably influenced by their military experience, many Romans seem to
have developed traditions for living parts of their lives on heights from which
you can have an overview of the strategically important parts of the horizon.
* All drawings by the author.
60
What makes Rome: ROME? 61
Figure 4.1 Saint Peter’s Cathedral on the horizon seen from a terrace in
the heart of Rome. ‘All roads lead to Rome’, says a Danish and
English proverb. The beauty of this view might signal why it is
worth considering going here
Figure 4.2 Sketchbook drawing made from the top of the Hotel
Ponte Sisto. The name of the bridge refers to the Pope
who built it
This is the frame and context in which tourists and visitors as well as
locals look at the spectacular city. In a sense, the city is watching itself in
everyday life. How can these phenomena be used to develop concepts by
the Roman tourist organization about how Rome can be experienced in fas-
cinating ways? This chapter offers some suggestions, based on the author’s
own experiences, analysis and interpretations on location of what are the
vital parameters for these challenges.
Figure 4.3 A view from the early castle, ‘Castello del Angelo’, that has a
very dramatic and turbulent history. On the balcony there are
actually four columns, so the potential for looking around is
greater than in this drawing
3 CANONICAL ICONS
Most of these Roman views can also be found in paintings and drawings
in the rich Roman art museums, as well as in art museums around the
world. This only adds to the complexity of accounting for what the
spectators see. The basic problem of the genesis and structure of visual
memory is not just addressing paintings and drawings. Audrey Hepburn,
in the rôle of a young princess visiting Rome, accompanied by Gregory
Peck in the motion picture Roman Holiday (1953) may invoke several
classic Roman architectural environments. Another example is Anita
Ekberg, bathing in Bernini’s Fontana Trevi, accompanied by Marcello
Mastorianni in La Dolce Vita (1960). Episodes like these might cross your
mind in a pleasant way.
Quite substantially, this city can be said to have developed a visual
‘meta’ level, iconic representations encompassing several genres and a vast
historical space. Visitors to Rome will be mentally intertwined with aspects
of these individually located memories. But there is even more to it than
that.
Figure 4.4 ‘Forum Romanum’ experienced in a multisensory way from one

of the ancient roads
4 MULTISENSORY CONSCIOUSNESS
Looking at Figure 4.4, you may ask yourself: did I just see or did I actually
feel the robust and irregular surface of this famous original pavement
through my feet? Or was my attention primarily focused on the thickness
of the sole in my shoe? Or were both aspects active?
This example shows important bodily aspects of our perception. We
are really equilibrists with our senses, moving around in combined and mul-
tifaceted ways as here in Rome’s deeply fascinating antique surroundings.
Besides, we meet a road that is not leading to Rome but is in Rome!
There is an important cognitive and communicative lesson to learn from
these multisensory experiences. If we want to serve customers and visitors
well we should think in this broad cognitive complex perspective. We should
study in depth what the consequences of our multisensory interaction with
the surroundings are. Only then can we develop relevant multimodal ways
of enriched communication in various geographical environments. At the
same time you may enhance the quality of people’s lives and probably also
earn more money. An attractive combination!
Combining elements from motion pictures that show Roman attractions
and the real and fruitful multisensory experiences, one could develop
slogans like Rome – dream and reality. I now turn to the crucial role of the
Figure 4.5 Academics in particular seem to develop a tendency to forget that

they cannot transcend their bodily existence (except when they
are deeply in love), but anybody is born as a body. We live our
entire life as a body and we also die as a body (Laursen, 2003: 75)
body in our cultural experience. Human experience is both facilitated and

limited by the fact that the life of each individual is bound up with a par-
ticular body, a living organism.
To underline the importance of the fact that we use our body to experience
the surrounding world, I consider it relevant to quote the American psychol-
ogist, James Gibson, who said: ‘One sees the environment not with the eyes
but with the-eyes-in-the-head-on-the-body-resting-on-the-ground’ (Gibson,
1986: 203).
5 UNIQUE SPATIAL POSITION
If you look at Figure 4.6, drawn in Manhattan in New York (to follow
Gibson shortly to the part of the world where he worked and to suggest
discreetly other interesting destinations for you as a traveller, a globetrot-
ter, you are invited to imagine how this mirrored city-landscape will change
in all parts in the very moment you just move your body just one inch).
So we are always in a unique spatial position – in Rome, New York or
anywhere else – from which only I can see my world. Nobody else can see
exactly the same world simultaneously. They can position themselves in the
same place at some other time, but my exploration of the world is original
here in the deepest sense of the word. And that goes for everybody: the
Figure 4.6 The Empire State Building mirrored in glass covering some
neighbouring skyscraper at St. Bryant’s Park early one sunny
morning. The slightly irregular surface of the glass made this
scenery very lively and beautiful, especially the very moment you
moved. So walking by this scenery was a tremendous aesthetical
visual experience revealing that any change in my position would
immediately change what I saw and make it come to life
exploration always follows the individual body. The experience industry

should always be deeply attentive to that fact when strategies are created
and concepts are developed.
6 A STRING OF SITUATIONS
Being a body all our lives also means that we can be said to live a kind of
situational existence. We are always in some kind of situation. Our lives can
meaningfully be described as a long complex string of situations put
together by time. Some of the following drawings made on location will, it
is hoped, illustrate aspects of that.
Figure 4.7 This is a typical view of Rome, showing columns and newer
buildings in one mix
Figure 4.7 represents in my mind something very typical of Rome – and

also something typical of my memory of Rome – the mix of ancient and new
elements. The past seems to turn up everywhere in the different parts of the
central city. You are reminded everywhere in central Rome that history is just
around the corner, or is the corner. The Roman Empire is never far away.
Rome was the centre of the world, and it still is in some ways, which I will
illustrate with further examples throughout this chapter. This urban land-
scape is built on top of the previous one, which in turn uses raw material from
even earlier periods. So to some extent it is also a mess (Nykær, 2005), but a
mess that, paradoxically, seems extremely beautiful and attractive.
To conclude, it seems to be the complex mixture of historical and new
elements being brought together in surprising ways that fascinates visitors
here, where the river was the original reason for building a good harbour.
In ancient times it was easier to sail here because the sea level was higher.
This function of the beautiful river has diminished. But it used to be
absolutely essential for transport for the life-giving commerce. A new
harbour close to the ocean took over a long time ago.
7 TOURISM, SURROUNDINGS AND FILM ICONS
Tourism has become the new key element in Roman and Italian commerce.
One of the evident reasons is of course the spectacular way history
Figure 4.8 People seem small at a distance in the ‘Forum Romanum’ area,
passing the basilica of Maxentius
dominates this city. Figure 4.8 shows a distant view of part of the Forum
Romanum area. In Figure 4.9 we are much closer to the architecture, seeing
an umbrella being activated in front of the oldest Roman building (118–125
), the Pantheon (at the Piazza della Rotonda) famous for the construc-
tion of the open circular cassette ceiling.
If you have not been to Rome, but have seen some of the many success-
ful films shot here, you may even get the feeling of being in the middle of
one, especially if you just turn a corner and suddenly find yourself in front
of a tourist attraction. Walking in Rome sometimes reminds me of cuts in
films because of the sudden way you experience being met by the next his-
toric monument. You can be very close to it without seeing it, and suddenly,
here you are! The Pantheon strikes me as a monument that invokes this type
of experience for many people.
Frederico Fellini entitled one of his most famous films, Felinni’s Roma
(1972). Like New York, this capital also exists as an icon in many people’s
minds. You may feel you have been there even if this is not the case.
The Basilica San Pietro – St. Peter’s Cathedral – often appears in various
media. It seems to be a permanent strategy on the part of the Vatican State
to have the Pope and the cathedral exposed widely and at the same time in
certain visually controlled ways.
Figure 4.9 The Pantheon and the cassette ceiling showing the sky in the
hole at the top
Figure 4.10 There are churches present all over Rome. Here I have made a
fast ‘Snapshot’ drawing made from the top deck of an open
sightseeing bus
What bodily position and visual angle might you get an idea of if you
look at Figure 4.11, which is not a canonical drawing, but a sketch I made
one dark and rainy evening when people were quickly passing by?
You may wonder what the difference is between this illustration and the
Figure 4.11 The Spanish Staircase in the evening. At this very inviting
location and in the surrounding area Danish artists have met
since the time of the Golden Age. At that time many of them
stayed here for longer periods, one of the writers being
H.C. Andersen. A concept might sound thus: ‘Walk around in
the world-famous Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale
“Rome” ’, as a part of the realist/dream strategy. The sculptor
Bertel Thorvaldsen stayed and worked in Rome in the most
important period of his life (Nørregård-Nielsen, 2005)
iconic views. The answer can be found in the position of my body. In this
sketch I show what I see when walking down the staircase instead of placing
my body in the conventional frontal angle towards the staircase, a visual
composition you find on most postcards from that locality. But the drawing
still appears to the spectator as fresh and different compared with the
canonical depictions. I suggest that you combine canonical and fresh views
in your visual strategy so your audience feels a significant richness and
variety in the visualizations you present to them, something to be recog-
nized immediately (the canonical views) mixed with views to be studied a
bit longer, to secure the immersive and seductive elements.
Therefore, the illustrations in this chapter are important interdisciplinary
parts of the whole project of making concepts for the tourist industry. In
this visual communicative perspective I maintain that good drawings can do
better jobs than photos. Consider using drawings as a medium that con-
vincingly underlines the personal signature of experiences, perhaps in com-
bination with colour photos, to create authentic dreams that are experienced
as being realistic.
8 CONTRASTS AND FEAR
The impression of what this house in Figure 4.12 is hosting is quite different
in Figure 4.12a, which might reveal that the architecturally significant
building in is nothing less than the headquarters of the Roman Police and
Intelligence Service.
The sketches were made in the period when the Aldo Moro affair was
changing the general impression of Rome significantly – from this espe-
cially culturally rich and charming capital to something that associated a
kind of war zone with a lot of big buses full of policemen and soldiers car-
rying machine guns. This was deeply frightening. Poverty and terrorism are
significant threats to the tourist industry. Several times I found myself
debating whether or not I would take a walk in the city in the evening
during that stay. So even extraordinary surrounding beauty can be vulne-
rable.
This man caught my attention around midnight, not at first because I
saw him (just the moving arm being visible) but because of the noise he
made shouting aggressively at the world around him, moving his arm to
underline the importance of the statements I could not understand. And
I am not sure I wanted to. But I was pleased that he stayed where he was
when I made the drawing and passed by, feeling a mixture of the shouting
as some kind of bodily attack and the problems of deep poverty in many
cities.
Figure 4.12 Figure 4.12a

Figure 4.12 This beautiful yellow building appears very elegant and
charming in the artificial evening lights from the street lamps,
so all the scenery seems to indicate the beauty of a dark
Roman night. There must be very rich people living here, you
would guess
Figure 4.12a Different colourful uniforms are often part of spectacular
views in front of Roman ministries
9 THE INNOVATIVE BACKGROUND FOR FASHION

AND ART
Roman and Italian fashion (Milan) compete with Paris as the main centre
of style in the Western world.
What I think is symptomatic of the concrete urban landscapes that sur-
round both Italian and French fashion production is the massive and domi-
nant presence of art and beauty. I think that it is important to notice that
didactic attention and strategies are innovative in Northern Italy. In my
view we lose a lot of money in Denmark by failing to produce fertile educa-
tional backgrounds for designers in the rich, innovative sense of that word.
Mastering spatial expressivities is vital for visual and multisensory design.
In Italy and Rome you find some theatrical traditions which are import-
ant for understanding the study of visual expressivities. This is an
Figure 4.13 A poor man resting outdoors in a big cardboard box
interesting, deep and widespread background which also includes the pro-
duction of costumes, the commedia del arte.
To a significant extent the broad theatrical traditions also build on the cre-
ativity of local people. This is important for the artistic fertility of an area.
I have met something similar in Prague. My university students were drawing
in the city, meeting Czechs, asking them which Academy they came from.
They answered that they were just drawing because they wanted to improve
their skills. And they certainly were good already. The ‘Laterna Magica’ is
not born out of empty space here, but relies on strong and broad traditions
for showing things in spectacular and engaging ways, designing experiences.
10 ART AND FOOD
Well-equipped in Italian design, we are probably getting hungry, looking

for interesting restaurants.
Figure 4.14 These two hats present and represent very different fashions in
Rome
Figure 4.15 Wearing masks and playing popular theatre is not just a
passion for professional actors like the famous Dario Fo.
Ordinary people are deeply engaged in creating all aspects of
these old performances
You find a wide range of restaurants in different parts of this town,

from cheap places to very expensive gourmet attractions. In art history
you find a lot of food. It was not only Guiseppe Arcimboldi that experi-
mented with collages built by depictions of vegetables on the canvas. Just
thinking of the production of Stilleben in the Netherlands your appetite
will probably grow. And in the Roman restaurants you find a lot of art
history indirectly.
If you study the way plates are arranged, you will find that the way of
composing is deeply inspired by modern painting. The cooks are sort of
‘painting’ with the food material as ‘colours’ on the canvas, which here is
identical to the plate. And these ‘paintings’ then have the special interesting
culinary quality that you can – and are expected to – eat them! And don’t
forget to smell these works of art when they are at their best and you taste
them together with good wines.
The atmosphere and mood in the particular area you are visiting are
extremely important parameters for the way you relax and enjoy your meal.
In Figure 4.18, I have tried to suggest my feeling of well-being on the flower
market.
You feel that you are close to things at this flower market, but still
your sight also tells you that there are other spectacular attractions in the
neighbourhood.
11 SPACE AND LINEAR PERSPECTIVE
I think, as a conclusion about patterns of Roman experiencing, that two

bodily positions in the urban landscape are dominant: being often extremely
close up to something in narrow streets or being distant from something
spectacular, like the icons on the Plazas. These contrasts are constantly
changing, and that is important for the experience of the whole cityscape.
Filippo Brunelleschi in Florence described the basic principles for linear
perspective (central perspective) and this way of seeing the surrounding
world has played a major role in Western culture ever since the Renaissance,
and it certainly still does.
Computers like linear constructions because they are easy to calculate.
We cannot walk in a city without meeting houses built like boxes. Every day
we are very often surrounded by linear perspective; however, the construc-
tions are not as beautiful as in the Renaissance and the baroque period.
If you stand on the little round flagstone in the Church St. Ignazio and
look up to see the deeply impressive ceiling with the painting of heaven, it
seems to show eternal dimensions, all brought visually together by Andrea
Pozzo at the very point you are standing on. But if you just go a few steps
Figure 4.16a–b Studying the atmosphere in Roman restaurants is a

project that should include several trips
Figure 4.17 Here we are in front of one of the absolutely delicious ones
that served me a meal I can still remember
Figure 4.18 ‘Campo di Fiori’ is one of my favourite locations in the centre

of Rome. Beautiful colours, sounds of hundreds of active
people selling and buying things – you are surrounded by
different smells of a wide range of fresh quality products
away from this precise middle point you will start to feel that you are
looking at a fake in this significant architecture. Here you feel intensely that
the artists cared about where the experiencing body was created. And you
feel your own body’s position strongly.
To follow the constructions of linear perspectives you should also visit
Palazzo Spada and experience the fake of Borromini, another famous
architect. What is wrong with it? You see a portico and it looks right. The
problem, however, is that the columns get smaller and smaller according to
the distance of the observer. This means that they are pretty small at the
end, where you also see a sculpture of a man only half the size of a normal
person. But it looks true and realistic, as normal size. The problem is that
this architecture is so perfect that it is not showing the illusion.
I asked one of the attendants if he would kindly walk into the portico.
Then something absolutely amazing happened: it looked as if the body of
the attendant grew bigger when he stepped in there, next to the little statue!
By asking this question I think I gave the visitors at the Gallaria Spada the
spatial explanation of the perspectival aspects and the fake they otherwise
might have overlooked. The linear perspective has become such an inte-
grated part of everyday life in the Western world that we experience it
Figure 4.19 A church can be seen on the horizon of Campo di Fiori. And
the Romans do not seem to miss aerials for television. Have
you noticed the difference in noise level when you are outside
or inside a Roman church?
without noticing. Therefore it is interesting to meet these old Italian masters

who use it so powerfully.
12 ART AND POWER
Many Italian works of art and designs are as powerful as the Borghese
example in Figure 4.20. Where does it come from? This is a complex cogni-
tive, emotional, educational and historical question, but I think it is wise –
in this chapter – to start to look at the surroundings and the potential
experience, and study what has been done to it as a basic point of departure
for answering this highly important question for the experience industry.
If you seek Bernini in Rome you will find his works in many places, not
just the famous baldachin in St. Peter’s Cathedral. A complete guide to his
works would please many foreign visitors.
Bernini was the sculptor that influenced Rome most significantly. The
fountains on the Piazza Navona still remind me of the focal soundscape of
the water, surrounded by people talking and enjoying themselves.
Bernini contributed so much beauty to his Roman surroundings, and
specifically to the artistic quality of the dominating baroque look. You
might expect to find an impressive gravesite for this man, something in the
Figure 4.20 Why not use the head of a cow to carry your agave or some
other flourishing plant? You have the chance here at the Villa
Borghese Palace. How would you get such an idea? What
design?
Figure 4.21 Bernini angel. Here I have repeated the drawing. You find the
one of the sculptures on the Ponte St. Angelo
Figure 4.22 Palazzo Pamphilii on the Piazza Navona, with details of one
of Bernini’s two fountains in front of ‘The four rivers’. Only to
show ‘Pars pro toto’ can be a clever indirect way to make
people wish to experience all of it. I drew this sketch one night
using white pencil on black paper
form of the memorials of the Popes. If you visit the huge Santa Maria
Maggiore Church you will see an extensive, expensive and dominant marble
sculpture of one of the Popes, but all you find of Bernini’s grave is the fol-
lowing humble writings on the floor:
Figure 4.23 It is not easy to find and see Bernini’s humble grave. Instead
this church invites you to put a Euro in an automat and turn
on the lights for 30 seconds to study some colourful wall
paintings. That may not be the way you conquer the hearts of
the spectators
Figure 4.24 One of the fountains in the ‘Villa Borghese’ park. Coloured
ink drawing
In the huge and wonderful Borghese park, you also come across impres-
sive and charming fountains. In some way you have to interact with them.
They affect your rhythm.
You can hear a fountain, you can see it, and you have to walk around it
to study it (or walk half way round it, for most just to pass it) and you can
often feel its presence on your skin if tiny drops of water from it are carried
by the wind. So your movements are influenced by this very pretty and
probably life-prolonging construction.
13 CONCLUSIONS
Enjoy the complex experience of Roman beauty. Directly and indirectly you
can learn a lot from it: surrounding beauty showing fertile aesthetical con-
trasts made by artistic equilibrists! Welcome aboard, but remember –
especially if you work in the experience industry:
a. When you develop concepts about travelling and tourism, always remem-
ber that people use their body to experience the surrounding world.
b. Therefore interdisciplinary thinking and full attention to multisensory
behaviour are essential parameters to ensure powerful results.
c. The developer of the concept must have deep personal knowledge and
multisensory on-site experience.
Figure 4.25 Figure 4.26
d. Having made all these complex studies the core function is to interpret
how you can create, formulate and visualize the most attractive slogans
in your concept, as for example:
e. Here about Rome: ‘Reality, history and dream’.
f. What about New York (Figure 4.6): ‘Mirror yourself in Manhattan’.
g. Paris? How many of your spontaneous associations are audible? Visual?
REFERENCES
Eco, Umberto (2002), ‘Storia della Belezza’, RCS Libri S.p.A.: Bompiani.
Gibson, James (1986), The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, London:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Laursen, Bjørn (2003), ‘Paris in the body – the embodiment of Paris’, http://
www.ruc.dk/upload/application/pdf/f51d6748/LaursenParisInTheBody.pdf.
Laursen, Bjørn (2006), ‘Drawing, cognition and innovation’, Art Teachers National
Magazine, no. 1, ‘Billedpædagogisk Tidsskrift’; no. 2, June 2006. English trans-
lation on my website.
Nørregård-Nielsen, Hans Edvard (2005), ‘Dengang i Rom. H.C. Andersen og gul-
daldermalerne’, Gyldendal, Copenhagen (‘Once upon a Time in Rome. Hans
Christian Andersen and the painters of the Golden Age’).
Nykær, Mogens (2005), ‘I Pavernes Rom’, Gyldendal, Copenhagen (‘In the Popes’
Rome’).
Figure 4.27 While staying at the Accademia di Danimarca (Danish

Academy) in Rome I met this Bernini-inspired little elephant
5. The backstaging of experience
production
Jon Sundbo and Peter Hagedorn-Rasmussen
1 INTRODUCTION
Experience production has become more businesslike, and less artistic.

More technology is being introduced, the channels for delivering experi-
ences have become more differentiated and experience production is more
connected to the production of goods and services. Here we define experi-
ence as a mental journey that leaves the customer with memories of having
performed something special, having learned something or just having fun.
This journey can be created in different ways: by having artists or other per-
formers provoke the mind, by purchasing an experience product or just by
using one’s fantasy. Often, all these three elements are present. However,
purchasing, the business aspect of procuring experiences, is, in our view,
becoming more dominant in people’s consumption of experiences. This
chapter examines the business aspects, the situations where experiences are
consumed in the form of a market service. Furthermore, we look at the pro-
duction side of experience consumption: how experience-producing firms
currently organize and develop the production of experiences. We attempt
to identify a specific, new experience production system.
Experiences are produced in different industries, such as art, tourism, IT
entertainment and also manufacturing and services. We take our point of
departure from Pine and Gilmore (1999) who define experience as a generic
business activity of staging. However, we introduce a new understanding of
experience production in relation to the traditional creative – ‘artistic’ –
function known as ‘frontstaging’. The point is that the position changes
when business imperatives (productivity, technology use and innovation
pressure) are developed in experience firms, thus experience production
becomes more backstaged as a consequence of the increased opportunities
for selling experiences. The increased opportunities are followed by
increased competition, which makes it imperative to develop backstage
functions for supporting the frontstage. Thus it is the increasing
customization of experiences (the focus on customer segments to which
83
competing experience firms also offer experiences) which leads to more

competition and a need for professionalizing management, innovation and
the production system.
By ‘backstaging’ we mean that general business principles are added in
order to improve competitive advantage. These may for instance be think-
ing strategically, seeing the product as a whole (including a bundle of
experiences, added services and so on), focusing on increasing productivity
to meet price competition, customer orientation or focus on organizing
innovation activities systematically.
Business activities related to experiences have become more varied. As a
consequence conditions for production and delivery also increase in varia-
tion. The production becomes more strategic (which implies more cus-
tomer orientation), systematic and ‘experience-engineering’. Innovation
becomes a systematic organized activity (and not just artistic anarchistic
creativity) Thus, a new production system is emerging. We will describe
these new tendencies in the experience production system.
The chapter will introduce theoretical statements and models. We have
been led to these by empirical case studies and some of the current theo-
retical discussions. The theoretical discussion and models will be presented
and extracts of interviews from the case studies will be included to provide
the empirical material.
First, as a background, we will discuss in general the experience economy
and relate it to the concept of the experience production system. After a
presentation of our methodological approach and its empirical basis, we
will present the different forms of experience production systems by estab-
lishing three taxonomies: the first taxonomy grasps the production system
based on production and delivery means, the second taxonomy considers
the value chain and the third conceives experience production systems in
terms of the organizational form under which they are managed. After this
we will go into a more detailed analysis of the strategy as a framework for
understanding the changes within experience production. This leads us to
an analysis of the concept of experience and how it is reflected in the trans-
formation in which experience goes from frontstage to backstage. In the last
section, before the conclusion, we will discuss how the experience firms
innovate. Innovation is currently a core factor in the development of pro-
duction systems. Experience production may always have been creative;
however, it has become increasingly based on long-term strategy and sys-
tematic innovation processes. Innovation is more than the creative devel-
opment of an idea (such as a play, a computer game, a piece of music); it
also includes the successful marketing of the idea and the creation of profit.
Innovation may also be a development of the organization, marketing or
internal procedures to improve the quality of the experience product or
The backstaging of experience production 85
lower the price. We will strive to establish general models based on the case
studies.
The general theoretical perspectives, together with the analysis of the
case studies, thus lead us to conclude that the experience production system
has been transformed by an increasing backstaging of experience produc-
tion. By this we mean that strategic considerations and innovation of
broader experience packages (concepts) increasingly become the basis for
the experience production system.
2 THE EXPERIENCE PRODUCTION SYSTEM
The experience economy and thus the experience production system covers
many industries. Some industries, which may be defined as the primary
experience sector, have experience production and sales as their only, or
main, activity. Other industries, which may be defined as the secondary
experience sector, have experience production as an addition to other activ-
ities such as manufacturing and service production (cf. Porat’s (1977) ana-
lytical model). Our empirical focus in this chapter is on the primary sector
where experience is the core product. We need to understand that, before
we could go to the secondary sector (which we will not do in this chapter).
However, the findings are partly applicable for the secondary sector as well.
The secondary sector today is defined partly by its appropriation of knowl-
edge and methods within experience production taken from the ‘first
moving’ primary sector. They apply experience production as an add-on.
Knowledge provided on the anatomy of the experience economy may prove
useful to their approach of applying experiences to manufacturing and
service production.
By ‘experience production system’ we mean the way in which experi-
ences are produced and delivered. This includes (a) the general business
model (strategic decision of the market segment and the type of experience
product) (b) the structuring of organization and management of the expe-
rience production (c) the strategic management of human resources
and capabilities necessary to create experiences (d) the way experience
firms innovate and (e) the way experiences are delivered. Even though we
acknowledge that the experience most often is created together with the
user or customer (Mossberg, 2003), we intend to focus on the implications
it has for the production system. As such, the way experiences are deliv-
ered will only be touched on in so far as it has direct implications for the
other aspects of the experience production system. We assume that there
are a limited number of production systems, thus we assume that it is pos-
sible to reach scientific conclusions concerning general principles of the
production system and a systematic taxonomy of variations within the

general principles.
For many companies in the primary experience sector, it is new to intro-
duce a business model and general management principles. It is also new
to think systematically in innovating not only the experience product, but
also related services. For many experience producers it is new to think in a
strategic and holistic way where individual experiences are combined. One
important reason is that these companies are often built upon creative
people’s inner desire to perform a particular discipline. They are not (in the
first instance) created to fulfil an imagined customer’s need of experience.
To do so, it is often argued, would be to weaken their artistic autonomy
and creativity. However, the experience economy changes this anatomy
between experience production, organization, management, innovation
and customer orientation: it is acknowledged that the opportunity to gain
economic surplus will create new opportunities to strengthen and widen
the activities of creativity. While earlier creativity and economic organiza-
tion, within experience production systems, semantically have been seen
as, partially, mutually exclusive, this is changing in current organizing of
the activities.
The production system, as stated here, is a scientific observation.
However, it also presents useful knowledge for managers within the experi-
ence sector since it tells us about the general principles behind experience
production that a series of more or less successful experience firms have
developed, based on their practice.
3 METHOD AND EMPIRICAL BASIS
This chapter is part of a larger attempt to understand the development of

experience production and innovation. We follow a method of employing
both deductive testing and inductive concept and theory building to ensure
more valid and exact knowledge. The chapter is the result of a first step. The
basis for the following discussion is theories of the experience economy and
the management of experience production. We have used these to design
the approach towards our case studies. We started by reading the theoreti-
cal literature which provided concepts, hypotheses and models as the basis
for the case studies. However, we have also done the case studies in an open-
minded fashion in an attempt to understand the cases. We have, on the basis
of the case studies, revised the theoretical approaches and created new con-
cepts, models and explanations, which we present here.
The theoretical point of departure has primarily been the work of Pine
and Gilmore (1999), the literature on arts management (Björkegren, 1996;
Clancy, 1994) and event management (Bowdin, 2001) and some

Scandinavian literature on experience marketing and management (O’Dell,
2002; Mossberg, 2003; Lund et al., 2005). These are not ‘testable’ theories,
however they contribute some taxonomies and analytical perspectives which
can be, and which are here, elaborated on. The literature has procured some
models and considerations about experience production. What we have not
found is literature on innovation in experience. Although there is a compre-
hensive popular literature that praises the artistic creativity of experience
production, no literature seems to discuss whether experience firms do inno-
vate in the sense that manufacturing and service does (Boden and Miles,
2000; Sundbo, 2004). Further, our approach, following Pine and Gilmore,
concerns the commodization of experiences as a new general source of value.
Pine and Gilmore (1999) postulate that experience is an exciting journey far
away from simple commodization. They use the metaphor of staging. They
state a series of general production principles assuming that experiences can
be sold at almost any high price on the market. It is just a question of staging
the experience production in the right way. We, however, assume that – result-
ing from increasing supply of experience and competition – there will also be
pressure for productivity increase and systematic innovation, based on for-
mulation of a strategy. There will be a tendency towards commodification.
The experience production will be divided into frontstage and backstage
experience production. This leads to a more ‘engineering-like’ form of pro-
duction model than Pine and Gilmore’s more marketing-oriented approach
and even an artistic anarchic one.
We base this on case studies of firms that belong to the primary experi-
ence sector. The concepts and models presented here thus only cover the
primary sector. However, this is also the generic sector where the core of
experiences is created. The cases are mostly, but not exclusively, from
Denmark. These firms include DR (The Danish National Broadcasting
Company), Betty Nansen Teatret (a theatre), IO Interactive (producing
computer games), Roskildefestivalen and Hultsfredfestivalen (two rock fes-
tivals), Hay-on-Wye (a booktown with many bookstores), Sports-network
Denmark (a network of sports arenas, hotels and so on, selling sports
experiences), Natur Centre Skagen (a building designed by a famous
Danish architect with a learning centre), Hotel Alexandra (a small hotel),
Copenhagen as Cultural Capital of Europe 1996 (two organizational units
were established; one has continued as Copenhagen’s official tourist pro-
motion organization) and Musicon Valley (an attempt to develop regional
industry based on culture, particularly music). We also draw on case studies
made by others (among these a study of Copenhagen Jazz House,
Denmark’s leading Jazz venue and cases described in the literature). The
data from these case studies are qualitative interviews with managers and
selected employees, as well as documentary material. The cases have been

selected to represent a variety of experience firms, but are also cases that
represent conscious attempts to develop the business.
4 TAXONOMY OF THE PRODUCTION SYSTEM
Our development of concepts and models starts with discussing different

taxonomies that can be used to structure the different forms of experience
producing organizations, which we shall term ‘production systems’. These
suggestions for taxonomies have been a result of literature studies and our
own case studies. The taxonomies are based on different criteria. The ques-
tion that the making of taxonomies helps to answer is: how does the experi-
ence product determine the production system?
The taxonomic business literature (e.g. Porter, 1980; Pavitt, 1984) and a
systematic analysis of our cases suggest that production taxonomies can be
created from three dimensions, which all are important for the business per-
formance of the firms. These three dimensions are (1) the type of experi-
ence the firms produce (the production and delivery means) (2) the value
chain (3) the organizational form. These three taxonomies can be used in
analyses of experience production, depending on the aim of the analysis.
We will apply the taxonomies in the following analysis when they are useful
instruments to explain what happens in the experience firm.
The first taxonomy is based on the type of experience the firms produce
(the production and delivery means). We will start by classifying experience
firms on two dimensions:
1. Distant experiences versus close experiences. In distant experiences the

experiences are distributed from the place of production to the cus-
tomers, while in close experiences the customers come to the place of
production.
Our argument is in general that backstaging becomes more impor-
tant. However, in the distant experiences, backstaging is extremely
important: what is experienced ‘on the stage’ is wholly dependent on
the ability of the producer to design the staging.
2. Technological experiences versus personal experiences. The technolog-
ical experiences are based on technology such as IT, while the experi-
ences are produced in personal face-to-face contact.
These two dimensions are illustrated with examples in Table 5.1. We have
chosen to term the production of personal experiences ‘performance’,
and the production of distant experiences ‘broadcast’. Technological close
Table 5.1 Taxonomy of experience production systems based on

production and delivery means
Technological Personal
Distant experiences Broadcast n.a.
Ex.
TV
Film
Entertainment of games on web sites
Close experiences Techno-interaction Performance
Ex. Ex.
Pintable arcade Theatre
Computer game Concert
Designer hotel Museum
Water land (indoor tropical
bath landscape)
experiences could be termed ‘techno-interaction’. Personal distant experi-

ences, logically enough, do not exist.
Based on our case studies and literature review (Department for Culture,
Media and Sport, 2001; Erhvervs-/Kulturministeriet, 2000; KK Stiftelsen,
2003) we suggest the hypothesis that an increasing part of the global experi-
ence turnover becomes technological distant experiences: broadcasts. This
mode of production and delivery system requires a complex interplay
between distinct actors, which calls for the development of a rational pro-
duction organization. The multinational corporations, which will produce
the main part of the economic growth in the sector, will be those who mean
to produce and distribute experiences rationally. This demands multina-
tionality and scale economy. The Danish computer game manufacturer IO
Interactive that we have studied cannot, for example, produce and distrib-
ute their games themselves. They are dependent on multinational corpora-
tions. They develop the games, which are stored at technical media normally
developed by SONY and distributed by multinational game distributors.
Seen from a cluster perspective (e.g. Porter, 1990), it is an advantage for
the development of the multinational players that many small experience
firms exist, even those who produce personal close experiences. They
develop new, innovative elements of experience that the large players can
imitate or use as inspiration. It is therefore a particular advantage if these
small firms include many entrepreneurs. A crucial factor for the develop-
ment is the interplay between the small firms and the multinational con-
cerns. IO Interactive was established as an independent, small, Danish
entrepreneur firm in 1992, but was later sold to a multinational game dis-
tributor. The Danish firm is kept as a development firm and the employees
have close connections to employees in other Danish game producer firms
because of a common interest and entrepreneurial pioneer spirit; as a
result, the whole game industry benefits. Another example is DR (TV
broadcasting company). They produce TV series and other broadcasts.
Because of an old collaboration between state-owned TV companies, they
have a large international distribution and sales network. On the other
hand, they use many small producers (film companies, video companies
and so on) in Denmark and abroad as sub-suppliers. They have established
their own independent production company. This has been very successful.
They sell many broadcasts and series and they have won many international
prizes.
Another way of separating experience firms (inspired by Pavitt, 1984) is
their place in the production chain. Do they produce consumption prod-
ucts where the experiences are delivered directly to the end users, or do they
provide experiences as a supplement to ‘traditional’ goods or services?
(Table 5.2).
One may assume that the production conditions and the production
organization is similar in types A and C since the experience is the core, the
mission of the company. B is different, even though experience is the core
Table 5.2 Taxonomy of experience production systems based on value

chain
A. Consumption products Experiences that are delivered directly to the

end-users (e.g. computer games, theatre)
B. Sub-supplier to goods Provide experiences as a supplement to goods or
or service products services (e.g. design and architecture,
author-recitation in a bank)
C. Sub-supplier to They produce for other experience producers
experience products (e.g. film company producing broadcasts to
a TV company)
D. Technical sub-suppliers As C, but producing technical equipment
to experience production particularly for experience production (e.g. hotel
equipment, light and sound equipment, software
‘containers’ for transmitting experiences on the web)
E. Auxiliary products Enterprises that are necessary for experience
production, but which do not produce experiences
themselves; they may produce for other industrial
sectors as well (e.g. hotels, catering, transport etc.)
Table 5.3 Taxonomy of experience production systems based on

organizational form
a. Large top-strategic firms Large organizations with a corporate policy

(e.g. DR)
b. Small top-strategic firms The top manager plays an important role:
he or she may be an entrepreneur (e.g. Betty
Nansen Theater, the Hultsfred festival)
c. Networks Loosely coupled network of organizations and
individuals (e.g. Sport-network Denmark, the
Roskilde festival)
of their production as well. However, they produce it for another company

and it is created as an add-on to an existing goods or service. D and obvi-
ously E are different from A and C since they are focused on delivery
‘support’ for the core experience, by applying either founding technology
or auxiliary products.
A third taxonomy that we have found in the cases (also inspired by the
analysis of service firms: Sundbo, 1998), is based on the organizational
form (Table 5.3).
These different types of experience organizations will develop different
production systems. Some of them will be transformed during a process of
maturation where they develop from loosely coupled networks to organized
small top-strategic forms, and even further to large top-strategic firms. IO
Interactive is an example, which started as a small business entrepreneurial
loosely coupled network (Hagedorn-Rasmussen and Sundbo, 2006) and
currently is becoming a top-strategic firm.
5 THE STRATEGY AS THE FRAMEWORK
Generally we can observe in the interviews that the experience firms

become more strategic in their orientation, which is a part of modern busi-
ness orientation. This means that they consider which market segments
they will address and which type of experiences these segments would want
in the future. This is a change from earlier, where the development of the
experience products was determined more by new ideas of the performers
(‘artistic ideas’).
The strong strategic orientation can be found in some large top-managed
and technology-based experience companies. The following quotations
illustrate how these companies think about strategy.
Before, the new broadcasts were created by journalists from a journalis-

tic point of view dedicated to a certain media. Now we start from the top,
asking, What is the need? Who are our customers? Then we develop a
concept. The media comes later. (Manager in DR – broadcasting)
We will be permanent sellers of computer games. We want to be in front

with development of new games and we will present new games that will
be in the world top ten at least every second to third year. This means
that we must have a continuous innovation process. The development of
a new computer game costs 10–13 million Euros. We must negotiate with
the publisher (global distribution firms) first and have a very planned and
well-managed innovation process. Before, the game-developers had more
freedom to sit by themselves and be creative. Some employees have left
us because they felt that they lost their creativity and independence.
(Manager in IO Interactive – computer game manufacturer)
The strategic determination is stronger in the distance-producing firms and

those with a technology-based delivery system. However, we find the ten-
dency in almost all types of experience firms, even the small entrepreneurial
ones, although they do not express it in the same sophisticated way as the large
firms. Their strategy is often reduced to their vision. An example can illustrate
the strategic way of thinking in small top manager-steered experience firms.
To a large degree Lars’ stomach decides what we present as long as he

can find it under the general rubric of jazz (Marketing manager about
the boss Lars; Copenhagen Jazz House, Jacobsen, 2004, p. 35)
This expresses the concrete artistic approach to develop the experience

firm. However, the jazz house has a more strategic oriented approach,
based on the vision of the manager. Lars, the manager, says:
We will give people spontaneous combustion. When the music moves

me deeply and emotionally and leads me to new and exciting landscapes
and brings me in contact with deeper layers in my inner mind, when my
analytical apparatus is disconnected, when my fragmentary knowledge
about music becomes unimportant, magic is in the room. It should be
surprising. I will never engage a musician that can play exactly like
Louis Armstrong. It may be impressive, but completely uninteresting.
(Copenhagen Jazz House, Jacobsen, 2004, p. 44)
The jazz house even has an idea of its market segment as being more intel-
lectual people, not the very youngest, and includes many tourists.
Another example of a small top manager-oriented experience firm,

where the manager has a vision that decides the repertoire and associated
services, is a theatre:
Peter (the co-managing director) and I decide what to put on. We develop
the repertoire after what we are inspired to. However, everybody in the
theater must accept the repertoire and so must the audience. We have set
up some rules for the service personnel. We have outsourced the bar. I
have made agreement on everything – the clothes that the employees
wear, the kind of food, etc. (The managing director of Betty Nansen
Theater)
The tension between artistic creativity and the commodification/ business

orientation is also expressed in the endeavours of creating a theatre mani-
fest. The theatre is subsidized by the Copenhagen Theater Community
(Storkøbenhavnske teaterfællesskab) who decides which theatres should be
subsidized. They – as other theatres – are expected to explicate their vision
and business strategy in order to make the theatres in general reflect upon
their strategy. This also serves as a means for the Copenhagen Theater
Community to prioritize amongst the many theatres that want to be subsi-
dized. One aspect explicating the vision of the theatre is the manifest which
is written by the cited manager. The first paragraph is as follows:
We believe that renewal and progress of theatre is not something that you
can reason out. All renewal originates from working at the floor level, by
evolution more than revolution. (Betty Nansen Manifest – our translation)
While the theatre on the one hand needs to reason out their strategy in order
to create legitimacy, they maintain that they create their progress ‘from the
floor’. Either way, it serves as a source of guiding the orientation. And, either
way, it exemplifies how the strategic approach becomes more normal in the
experience sector as a consequence of the increasing business orientation.
This gives more power to the managers. An immediate interpretation would
then be that it is a contrast to the artistic creative focus on the single perform-
ance that was common before. The production personnel of the experience
sector – the performers/artists (who in some cases are artists) – lose power.
However, we suggest that this power perspective is too narrow: another inter-
pretation would suggest that the tendency provides new opportunities for
‘creating stages’, thus providing increasing opportunities for performers and
artists to actually create. We will come back to this issue later when we discuss
innovation. However, the performers are to a large degree self-employed and,
as such, have their power as independent artists. Since they are often very
much in demand, still crucial for creating the experience at all, their power
remains sufficiently strong. Sometimes it is even greater than the managers’
when it concerns negotiation of prices and conditions. However, the per-
formers’ individual power over the experience firm, in general, is decreasing.
There are also artists or performers who act as entrepreneurs and estab-
lish their own firm. They may be supposed to be less formally structured in
their strategic approach, nevertheless they need to have a kind of business
model, just as entrepreneurs in other sectors do if they want to survive
(Hancock and Bager, 2005).
6 EXPERIENCE CONCEPTS
Above we have developed taxonomies of experience production and how

strategizing becomes increasingly important. The experience, that is, the
experience of a mental journey created with the customer, as we defined it
in the introduction, becomes a high-value product for which the customer
will pay a high price (cf. Pine and Gilmore, 1999). However, what is an expe-
rience product? This question must be answered within the framework
which sees experience production as being strategic. On the basis of our
case studies we will characterize that, by using a notion that practitioners
in experience firms – and service firms – use the concept. Although the cases
are quite distinct in their core activities, the notion of concept plays a major
role in most of them, designating the overall conceptualization of the
experiences they provide.
A concept is a general notion that can be applied in all types of produc-
tion. A concept can be defined as an idea which is the general framework
for the products. It includes a general idea of products or bundles of prod-
ucts (Normann et al., 1989), services or experiences, peripheral services or
peripheral experiences. The concept not only refers to the production side:
the marketing side is also included, for example the image of the firm, sto-
rytelling about the concept and the firm, market behaviour and marketing.
The ethics and values of the firm are a part of the concept.
Concepts are used in experience productions and the most development-
oriented experience firms emphasize concepts as the phenomenon they
sell and develop. A couple of examples illustrate how they consider a
concept:
We have selected a genre field, which is jazz, but also latin and soul. We
have a broad field and within that we present the top. We must also be an
incubator for foreign music that has not yet broken through. We want to
diffuse this music to a public – which includes all ages, nationalities
and social strata. The milieu must be relaxed and informal. (Manager,
Copenhagen Jazz House)
We start by defining the customer group and what their needs are. This
is customer-driven innovation . . . We want to inform the Danish popu-
lation and make them discuss Danish society. However, we can do this in
an entertaining way. There is no discrepancy between information and
experience . . . We define for example within drama which type of broad-
cast we want for a certain audience or market. We will emphasize series
that tell about the life in Denmark for the whole family. We have had
some big successes (called ‘Matador’ and ‘The chronicle’). (Manager,
DR-broadcasting)
A concept thus is superior to a product or an experience. It includes more

than the core experience such as a theatre play or a TV series. It is based on
a superior idea that is common to a bundle of experience products, such as
the complete theatre repertoire or the style of the TV company (as, for
example, providing TV series and soap operas). It also includes the periph-
eral experiences, for example restaurant and architectural experiences in
the theatre, the membership of the TV company club where you can buy
holiday journeys, goods and so on. It is crucial that the experience provider
creates a story about the concept so that the audience will know it. This
could, for example, be the following:
The Roskilde Festival is known for being an annual event where young
people will be together, have fun and listen to rock music. Even though
the rebellious aspects that originally were in the festival have weakened
since the start in 1972, they still play a role. It is a social get-together with
a meaning, which is also reflected in the fact that the festival is run by an
association that engages 20 000 volunteers and distributes the surplus to
humanistic purposes (humanitarian organizations, minority organiza-
tions etc.). Many people in Europe know the festival because of this
image and because they can remember they have been there. Few of them
can recognize all the bands they were listening to.
Another example of a storytelling about a concept is the following:
The Hultsfred rockfestival is known by 99 per cent of the Swedes. It has

an image of being a meeting-place for young people. They stay in tents,
listen to rock music and emphasize the social interaction among the
participants. It once was rebellious and a little dangerous, but this
image has more or less been transmuted into a more mainstream one
since so many of society’s notabilities have been at the Hultsfred festi-

val in their youth.
The use of concepts is in line with a strategic approach, since the concept
bridges the (imagined) experience created within the customer and the
firm’s strategic direction. The management decides which way to go and
which concepts to develop. It is then up to the actors to develop creative
experiences to fill out the concept.
7 FROM FRONTSTAGE TO BACKSTAGE
The increased focus on strategy and management leads to a change in the

production system. Greater emphasis is now being placed on the backstage.
Experience production may be considered as being composed of two parts,
called backstage and stage, to use a theatre metaphor. The stage is where
the experience is produced while the backstage is the management, the
back-up organization, the marketing and other functions that are not
visible in the experience product. The classic experience production (‘art’)
was carried out on the stage alone. The stage has traditionally been the core
of the experience production, sometimes the only part that managers and
employees have emphasized. This is the ‘artistic’ part that has been known
by the audience and the public. There was no backstage (or it was very
restricted, limited to a managing director and maybe a bookkeeper) in the
classic theatre or the circus. The more focus there is currently coming on
strategy, management and concept development, the more the backstage
means.
The positions and processes described in the crawling titles in a film are
the description of the stages. This is supported by the backstage, which pro-
vides management, structure, support and ‘back officing’: strategies are
conceptualized and disseminated/implemented (board meetings, public
relations, politics, budgeting and planning procedures); human resources
are managed (payroll, legal counsel, agreements and negotiations, commit-
tee, recruitment and selection, safety work etc.) and developed (training,
mentoring, job advancement, career planning, project development etc.);
operations management and quality are designed and monitored (stan-
dardization of work processes, input, output, qualification etc.); techno-
logical advancement at distinct levels (for instance conceptualization and
design of ‘containers’ to broadcast on new media etc).
The core experience (the music, the theatre play, the TV broadcast) is
created on the stage. The concept is created backstage to be experienced
frontstage by the audience, who are the customers that pay for the
experiences. To the audience, the concept presents a total experience includ-

ing the core experience, peripheral experiences and services and the frame-
work: the storytelling which means that everybody knows what we are
talking about. It presents a social framework: who else has received this
experience; has it been mentioned in the press, and so on. Thus we can tell
our friends and colleagues that we have been to this experience and they will
know, if not the concrete experience, at least the concept. Even though the
core experience is still the crucial element, the concept approach turns the
weight of the production system backwards to the backstage. The consid-
eration of the backstage becomes the effect on the frontstage more than the
consideration of the stage and the performance or artists there. They are
still very important and should be taken care of, but the total effect on the
frontstage has become the most important. We can therefore create the fol-
lowing model (Figure 5.1) to understanding an experience product. The
core is the pure performance – the art or the intended performance, such as
a football game or a theatre play. However, the audience experiences this
together with the story. The story adds something to the performance and
gives a framework to understand the performance. The core experience is a
combination of the core and the story about the core and the firm.
The story can be produced by the artists (the actor or the football player
giving interviews in the press) or it can be produced backstage by the man-
agement or the marketing department. Whatever, the backstage, that is, the
management, ensures that a story is created and communicated to the
market. The actor does not market the theatre, she is marketing herself. It
is the theatre manager’s task to include her personal marketing in the story-
telling about the theatre. The story is partly about the single performance
(the core) and partly about the concept.
The core experience
The core
activity
art
etc
The story of the core
Figure 5.1 The core experience product

Peripheral experience
The core
experience
The core
activity
art
The story of
the core
Food, architecture
etc.
Figure 5.2 The total experience product
However, also the added services, such as the cleaning of rooms, bath-
room facilities, restaurants, entertainment in the intervals, a shop in the
museum and so on play a role for the audience’s perception of the total
experience. The audience, or customers, assess the total experience and not
just the core or the core experience. These side-activities, which can be
called the peripheral experiences (cf. peripheral services from the service
management literature, Normann, 1991) should therefore be included in
the model of the experience product. The extended model (Figure 5.2) thus
embraces the core activity, and the core experience as well as the peripheral
experiences.
The total experience creates value for the experience-producing firm and
improvement of the total experience creates extra value. The main part of
value and extra-value creation is the core experience. A minor part of value
and extra-value creation is in the peripheral experience. However, nothing
appears if the core is not good. That is also why the business and sales
aspects do not drown the artistic or performance aspect. There may be
more marketing and storytelling around the core, but the concept cannot
be sold if the core – the artistic or performance aspect – is not good, seen
from the customers’ perspective. The backstage management must take
that into consideration.
Table 5.4 Model of the experience production system
Backstage Stage Frontstage

Strategy and Producer perspective Customer perspective
management
perspective
Organization and Performance Experience room
management The creative, ‘artistic’ Visible
process. Artists, directors,
performers etc. Customer
(experience)
• Strategy
• Production flow Alex
• Logistics • Participation
• Marketing • Personality
• HRM • Servicescapes Beatrice
• Training • Experience ‘logistics’
• Technology • Sensuous input
• Innovation • Physical experience
• Networking • Material ‘support’ Christine
8 CONTEMPORARY PRODUCTION SYSTEM IN

EXPERIENCE
Now we will turn to the experience production system. We will argue for
one general model in which to explain the strategic behaviour of all the
experience firms that we have studied.
The backstaging tendency is an important development that needs empha-
sizing if one wants to understand modern experience production. The ‘pre-
ceding’ organizing efforts behind the stage are focused upon here. It is the
production perspective and the related organizing issues that we will focus on
as the chapter proceeds. However, in fact, the experience production may be
considered as having three parts: backstage, stage and frontstage. Backstage:
management, administration, finance etc; stage: performance or broadcast –
‘Art’; and frontstage: the customers and services (cf. Mossberg, 2003).
This idea is expressed in a model of the experience production system
(Table 5.4).
Even though we have suggested different taxonomies and other authors
have suggested some as well (e.g. Pine and Gilmore, 1999; Mossberg, 2003),
it seems difficult to situate the experience-products unambiguously. The

design and production of experience may intend to concentrate on one or
the other type of experience. However, whatever intention the producer has,
the customers – ‘the audience’ – may perceive, understand and use the
experience differently. Pine and Gilmore’s (1999, p. 30) model of experi-
ences suggests that experiences can be either entertainment, educational,
aesthetic or escapist. A TV broadcast may be produced with the intention
of being knowledge-providing or educational. However, a viewer may use
it to relax or escape from the everyday doings. The frontstage lives its own
life through the customers.
A part of research within the experience economy focuses on the front
stage and how these experiences are scripted and staged (cf. the service mar-
keting and management approach: Mossberg, 2003; Arnould and Price,
1993). Which role do other users/customers play for the experience? How
is the physical design related to the experience? What constitutes whether
the experience precedes or produces absorption where the experience is
internalized within the customer, or immersion where the customer goes
into the experience (Mossberg, 2003)? An example of emphasizing the
frontstage is the Betty Nansen Theater:
The Betty Nansen Theater interviews representatives of the audience

every time a play has had its first performance. The audience is not only
asked about their opinion of the play, but also about their general
impression of the theater and its concept and the peripheral services
(such as meals and drinks). A control group of non-audience (found in
a railway station) is interviewed as well.
The frontstage approach is marketing-oriented. It may be placed within the

tradition of service marketing (cf. Mossberg, 2003), which emphasizes rela-
tionship marketing (cf. Gummesson, 2000). The interaction between the
customer and the experience provider and between customers is important
not only for the customers’ general image of the experience firm, but also
for their impression of the single experience product (whether an event
related to sale of a commodity, a theatre play or a computer game). The
service marketing approach also emphasizes the importance of peripheral
services (cf. Normann, 1991) which are not part of the main experience, the
performance. This is also relevant to experience provision.
For a long time, experience firms have emphasized the frontstage. Even
small top-steered experience firms and networks (such as festivals) have
been aware of the importance of marketing. However, the service mar-
keting approach could present new aspects, particularly on the import-
ance of peripheral services. The importance of these is demonstrated by
the following example of a small experience firm. The example illustrates

well how peripheral services may be integrated in the core performance,
thus providing an argument for considering all of them as an experience
packet.
The Roskilde rock festival is as much a matter of social get-together as

of music. Surveys among the participants show that 80 per cent of these
say that the most important for them is the social get-together (not the
music). The management of the festival emphasizes very much logistics
of peripheral services such as railings, meals, toilets and places for tents
and more resources in the backstage are allocated to these functions than
are to procure and manage the music.
The frontstage cannot be completely separated from the stage or the back-
stage, in particular in so far as the experience economy puts emphasis on
the frontstage as the service provided per se. This was already introduced
within the conceptualization of the service economy, where the ‘moment of
truth’ (Carlzon, 1989) was established between the front-line worker and
the customer. Within the experience economy, however, the moment of
truth resides even more ‘within’ the customer. The experience provider is
said to be the creator of the positions and roles which the customer is sup-
posed to fill in – and from where the customer will develop the memorable
experience. The frontstage is directly related to the backstage via the added
services (such as restaurants in the theatre, goods delivery via TV programs
and so on) without involving the stage. This further underlines the back-
staging tendency.
As illustrated above, the purpose of any given production within the
experience economy is that it intends to create an experience. How the
experience is imagined to affect the user/customer obviously ‘feeds back’ on
the process of organizing and managing. However, we do not know to what
degree such intention actually affects the organizing activities. Whereas
early organization theories would suggest that organizations are rational
systems consisting of actors which intentionally follow a common unified
goal, later theories argue that organizations are working compromises con-
sisting of a network of actors having their own interests and goals
(Brunsson, 2000). Today, it sometimes may even be difficult to maintain the
concept of an organization, in so far as a production may be the result of a
network of a loosely coupled system where actors have very different pur-
poses of being enrolled in this provisional network (as with many events
and festival organizations).
The experience firms tend to work more on developing all three parts of
the stage. The experience production becomes more well-considered,
systematic and thus industry-like. Less is left to the creative stochasticism

of the staging. The staging has been the traditional development focus of
experience firms and it still needs development in the form of new and orig-
inal ideas. The more global the competition in the experience sector, the
more original and virtuous must the staging ideas be. The backstage is
developed as described above. However, also the frontstage (what happens
to the customers and how they see the experience) should be emphasized.
9 BACKSTAGE TENDENCIES IN INNOVATION
9.1 Innovation as a Crucial Business Activity
Innovation is a crucial activity when we talk about business development.

Experience production is also subordinated to the law of competition – at
least as long as it is not heavily publicly supported. If an experience firm
wants to survive and grow, it needs to innovate to get ahead of the com-
petitors. Thus, innovation is part of the production system in contemporary
experience firms. From our case studies we can see that the way in which
experience firms innovate is currently changing. Experience firms or experi-
ence functions in firms that have produced experience (e.g. marketing
departments) have always had a certain amount of creative renewal of the
experiences. This tradition has come from art. Currently, the renewal activ-
ity is becoming more backstage in the form of the production activity. The
innovation activities are more planned, more strategic and customer-based
and the management considers how to organize innovation activities in a
way that may be similar to the one used in service firms (for example, Boden
and Miles, 2000; Gallouj, 2002; Sundbo, 1998). Experience production can
also be considered as a kind of service production (cf. Mossberg, 2003).
The top management develops a strategy for the next two years. They
work with the strategy in the autumn. Then there is a seminar where 150
managers discuss the strategy. After that the top management decides the
strategy in detail. They formulate the programme offer. Some areas will
continue, others not. This strategic process implies innovation at a
general level – which areas and types of programme we want the next
year. This is decided on the basis of investigation of surveys and meet-
ings with the users. The programme managers will decide which type of
broadcasts they will have within the framework of the chosen strategy.
They will create the content of some broadcasts, but more and more they
will invite for tender. Departments in the house as well as external firms
can submit a tender for each broadcast. These producers can be very
creative and innovate at the level of the single broadcast. In the future,
the development and the broadcasts will be much more user-driven. We
get 70 000 applications per year from the public. We make surveys and
focus-group interviews. (Managing director for TV – DR broadcasting)
Change in innovation approach is also related to use of new technical

media.
We have a strategy of procuring broadcasts on the new media (Internet,

mobile phones etc.). Our competitors move very fast. Our development
and innovation is based on a fixed framework. Our products are based
on the re-use of broadcasts from radio and TV. If the programme man-
agers want to be strategic and innovative, they must change their focus
from the single product to becoming more strategic and user-oriented.
(Manager for IT-network services – DR broadcasting)
Not only the large top-strategic experience companies that produce

technology-based distant experiences have a movement from stage to back-
stage innovation. Also small close-experience producing companies like a
theatre (the small top-strategic firms) are becoming more strategic in their
approach to renewal, as the following example shows:
The development of new products (new plays) is very much dominated

by my curiosity. My engagement rubs off onto the audience. However,
now we also use focus groups of people from the audience to develop our
repertoire. I engage the director and players and continuously discuss the
play with them. I have also organized things so that a group of second
generation emigrants develops and plays theatre. This social function of
the theatre is quite innovative and I have made it a part of the strategy of
the theatre that we must develop this. (Managing director of Betty
Nansen Theater)
9.2 Strategic Innovation Organization
The innovation process in experiences is becoming a strategic innovation

(Tidd et al., 1997; Sundbo, 2001; Fuglsang and Sundbo, 2005). The strat-
egy based on the internal resources (as emphasized in the resource-based
view of the firm: Grant, 1991) and an interpretation of the future market
becomes the framework for innovation. The point of departure for innov-
ation activities is the customers. The top managers decide which market
segment the firm wants to address. This process of formulating the strategy
can imply the employees and middle managers. The strategy is the frame-
work for which types of experiences the firm wants to provide. The strat-
egy also becomes the framework for innovation activities. Innovations –
even artistic creativity – should be kept within the framework of the strat-
egy. This tendency represents a backstaging of the innovation process.
Many of the experience firms that we have interviewed have started
working actively on how to organize innovation activities. They start train-
ing and development processes for the managers who should learn to
develop the superior innovation strategy and thus the framework for the
concrete innovations. The experience firms look for instruments to organ-
ize this process and use tools from manufacturing and services (kinds of
tools described in, for example, Majaro, 1988; Cooper, 2001; Ekvall, 1996;
Sundbo, 2001). The employees and middle managers are often involved in
this process. The innovation framework and the strategy are increasingly
focusing on the customers and how the market might develop in the future.
The latter also includes the competitors and how they might act in the
future. These tendencies also mark a movement away from stage to the
backstage.
This systematization of the innovation process can mostly be observed
in the large firms that produce distant-experiences, both in the technology
and in the personal based ones. The small close-experience producing firms
do not necessarily systematize their innovation process.
The innovation framework becomes the basis for the concrete innovation
activities, but often there is a layer between this superior strategy-oriented
innovation framework and the creative producers (the ‘artists’). Middle
managers (or programme directors, as they are called in DR broadcasting)
interpret the general strategy for their field and decide which types of new
experiences they want within the field. They may also organize develop-
ment processes with training, teamwork and so on involving the employees.
Employees may also present ideas and act as intrapreneurs (cf. Pinchot,
1985). Ideas for concrete experiences may come from the bottom-up. The
innovation process, as it happens for example in DR broadcasting, is very
similar to the one we can find in top-strategic service firms (cf. Sundbo,
1998; Toivonen, 2001; Nählinder, 2005).
What differs from the innovation process found in service firms is the cre-
ation of the concrete experience. Here there comes in the traditional cre-
ative, artistic element. The creative stratum such as actors, TV producers,
designers, creators of new tourist attractions and the rest fill out the frame-
work with innovative ideas of experiences that they develop and imple-
ment. Other personnel – technicians, scriptwriters and so on – may be
involved, but the creative personnel is in charge of developing the new
experience. The creative or artistic people are often hired for a special task.
DR-broadcasting’s call for tender to develop new broadcasts is also sent

to other TV-production firms, who can bid on the tender. Betty Nansen
Theater does not have its own directors and actors. They hire them for
each play. The director and the actors will create their personal interpre-
tation of the play.
The creative stratum is often self-employed people or sub-suppliers

(cf. Hagedorn-Rasmussen and Sundbo, 2006). This may involve actors that
are hired for a specific play, architect firms that are hired to design a hotel,
or professional football players that are hired by a club for a period. They
live their own life in which they innovate the concrete experiences. They
may be inspired by and learn from their engagement with different tender-
offering firms.
The innovative organization may be expressed in the following model
(Figure 5.3), which emphasizes both the difference as well as the symbiotic
relationship, between innovation and creative activity.
Innovation is the strategic development of concepts made by the perma-
nent firm or organization (backstage activities) while the artistic creativity
is ad hoc and fills the concept and makes it concrete (stage activities). The
artists are often taken in from outside.
This model is valid for much experience production, but not all. It
describes the typical experience production, but some experience firms have
the artists in-house and others do not have artists.
Does this mean that the artists get into a weakened situation and lose
power? Compared to a situation where the artist can decide the entire expe-
rience himself, without any consequences for his living standard, it does.
However, that is an ‘ideal’ situation, which is not very realistic except in the
Innovation Artistic creativity

Backstage Stage
Management
Organization
Artists
Strategy
Figure 5.3 Innovation and artistic creativity
rare case where the artist becomes extremely successful or public support is
extremely generous. The situation described above in Figure 5.3 leads to a
power balance between the backstage (the manager) and the stage (the
artist). Neither of them can realize their project without the other and both
have the opportunity of influencing the experience product. Who can
influence it may depend on the concrete situation and the personalities.
Actually, the general tendency of an increase in experience production
creates new opportunities for staging and artistic endeavours. This suggests
that power may not be seen as a zero sum game.
9.3 New Ways of Organizing Innovation Activities
Besides the strategic approach to innovation, we can in the cases that we have
studied observe other new ways of more systematic backstage organization
of the innovation activities. A kind of experience laboratory is developed. In
manufacturing, laboratories have often been the core of the innovation activ-
ities. This does not exist in the service sector (Miles, 2001; Sundbo, 1998),
while in the experience sector we have found tendencies to introduce a kind
of laboratory work. This may be explained by the fact that experiences
become technology-based to a larger degree than services and that artists
have a tradition of being creative in their ‘personal laboratory’.
The laboratories have the character of being experimental set-ups that
inevitably lead to innovations. They may be compared to the R&D activi-
ties in manufacturing firms.
At Roskilde University, which is a partner of the Musicon Valley project,

the sub-department of Performance Design has developed a Performance
Lab, which is developing computer programs to carry out events. The pro-
grams contain both manuals for organizing and managing the event,
steering programs for light and sound used in the event and other ele-
ments. The programs are developed and tested at the university. One pro-
totype has been tested in the Roskilde Rock festival.
The development of new computer games in IO Interactive is laboratory

work carried out within the firm. Between 50 and 120 persons are
involved in developing a new game in 18 to 24 months. The development
work is organized as an industrial development process with division of
labour through which different elements of the game are developed in
different teams. The teams test the elements internally in the firm and
with external partners, primarily manufacturers of the consoles (the
playing machines) and the distributors of games. While this shares some
characteristics of innovation labs it also bears great resemblances to
more traditional organizations of production. In some game develop-

ment companies they develop new engines for the games. The engine is
the fundamental software in the games and is decisive as regards which
opportunities you can apply in the further development of the specific
game process.
We have also found a type of entrepreneurial incubator where new entre-

preneurial firms are developed within the physical framework of an experi-
ence firm:
The Hultsfred rock festival has developed into an entrepreneur-

incubator (Thierstein and Wilhelm, 2001). The festival is run by an asso-
ciation with many volunteers and some full-time employed professionals.
The association has bought a large storehouse. There are activities
between the annual festivals and the professional festival association is
dominated by an entrepreneurship spirit. This is particularly the case for
the managing director, who has been involved since the start in 1982.
Many entrepreneurs have come from the festival association and others
have come from outside, and they all have residence in the incubator-
house (about 75 people are employed there). These entrepreneurs are not
performers (artists or stage personnel), they represent backstage func-
tions. They produce, for example, computer programs for composing
music and music services for mobile phones. Further, some are engaged
in the tourist industry (rock music exhibition, camping site related to an
attraction park for children), in education and even research.
10 CONCLUSION
Experience production is increasingly characterized by a tendency towards

larger business and market orientation. Private experience firms obviously
need to be business-oriented, but it seems also to increasingly be the case
for public cultural institutions. This does not justify the banal statement
that experience firms (including cultural institutions) should give the public
whatever they want, whereby experience products become pop and enter-
tainment. It means that the experience producers become more aware of
which type of experience they want to create. Is it serious or entertaining
experiences they provide? How does this relate to the market segment they
want to address? It also emphasizes how ‘to stage’ the experience: even
serious messages can be delivered in more or less interesting set-ups.
Further, the extra services, or other added peripheral experiences, are rec-
ognized for the contribution they make to the public’s impression of the
total experience. If the public reacts positively to the total experience, they
will come back and recommend the experience to other people. The argu-
ment for experience firms emphasizing the total experience is similar to the
argument behind service marketing (for example, Grönroos, 2000): to
attract satisfied customers who will come back. To be satisfied does not
necessarily mean that they were pleased by the core (for example, a theatre
drama which is critical of society), but that they think it was meaningful
and the story of the core plus the peripheral experience was great.
This tendency we called ‘backstaging’. It implies that strategic manage-
ment becomes more important. The production of experiences becomes
created and organized from a strategic point of view and from a concept
way of thinking. A concept includes the total experience: the core experi-
ence, the story about the core and the peripheral experiences. The concept
way of thinking means that the strategy-based general idea of which experi-
ences to develop becomes imperative. The creative or artistic concrete ideas
must either adapt to the strategy and the concept or, in rare cases, challenge
them. Stage, the creative, artistic layer, thus becomes less dominant, but is
still crucial for the experience production because it creates the core.
We have created generic taxonomies across traditional experience indus-
tries. The production system has common characteristics across industries.
Such generic taxonomies can give a better understanding of the principles
behind contemporary changes of experience production organizations.
Innovation becomes a particular theme in experience production –
outside artistic creation. Innovation relates to the development of concepts
while artistic creativity fills out the concept. Innovation in experience gen-
erally follows the strategic innovation model (for example, Sundbo, 2001;
Tidd et al., 1997). Particular to experience production is the fact that the
creative layer often comes from outside and designs the concrete experi-
ences. Also in particular – at least compared to services – is the fact that
innovation sometimes takes place in a kind of laboratory which can be
compared to the R&D function in manufacturing. This is caused by experi-
ence products which often are IT-based (such as computer games or news
at the mobile phone) and by the tradition of artists working in their per-
sonal intellectual laboratory (for example in their own home).
The backstaging and strategizing of the innovation activities does not
seem to lead to less innovation understood as business projects. It leads
to a larger economic payback from the successful innovation projects and
a greater market diffusion of these projects. One might state that the
artistic idea generation within the experience firm could decrease the
more the innovation process is backstaged. We cannot tell from our case
studies whether this is the case (it is difficult to measure with qualitative
methods). However, artistic creative ideas thrive outside the firms among
self-employed artists and there is in many areas an underground of new

artistic activities. The experience firms studied do not mention that lack of
creative artistic ideas could be a problem.
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6. Entrepreneurs in music: the passion
of experience creation
Per Darmer
1 INTRODUCTION
The focus of this chapter is on the entrepreneurs in the Danish music indus-
try (the independent labels or ‘indies’ as they are known) and their expe-
rience creation. The chapter highlights both the organizational field
(DiMaggio and Powell, 1991) of entrepreneurs in the Danish music indus-
try, and an individual entrepreneur, as the last illustrates the first. The activ-
ities of this entrepreneur from the Danish music industry are analysed to
illustrate his experience creation and the experience creation of the Danish
indies more generally. Before elaborating on this further, we discuss experi-
ence and experience creation and Pine and Gilmore’s (1999) notion of
developing a theme for the experience, and how the story has an imperative
role to play (Jensen, 2006) in experiences.
The experience creation of the entrepreneurs in the Danish music indus-
try goes beyond that of producing a CD. As Darmer and Sundbo point out
in the first chapter of this book, in addition to the production process
experience creation also includes the design, the management, the organi-
zation, the marketing and the usage of (how consumers receive) the expe-
rience. They also point out that the specific number and combination of
these factors vary with the experiences and the focus. This chapter looks at
the way the entrepreneurs in the Danish music industry design, manage,
organize and market the CDs, as all these factors are part of the experience
creation of the CD and the artist. The CD cannot be entirely separated
from the artist, as the artist is also part of the experience creation, as is how
the label is managed, organized, designed and the marketing of the CD and
the artist. The whole work with and around the CD is the experience cre-
ation that makes or breaks the artist and / or the CD. Therefore, the chapter
captures the experience creation of the Danish indies by looking at how
these labels are run.
The chapter looks at the experience creation and the experience creat-
ing organization; however it does not examine the experience creation of the
111
consumer, as this is already being discussed in much of the rock sociology lit-
erature, which looks at fan and youth culture and how that affects the buying
of particular music genres and CDs. The chapter focuses on how the entre-
preneurs of the Danish indies create experiences, which includes the design,
the management, the organization and the marketing, as they are all parts of
the entrepreneurial work of producing and selling CDs.
2 THE EXPERIENCE CREATION OF CDS
Pine and Gilmore (1999) emphasize that every business is a stage, and there-
fore work is theatre, but not every company that stages new experiences is
successful in the short or long term (Pine and Gilmore, 1999, p. 29). This is
especially true of the Danish indies, which produce the CDs. A CD is a
product (obviously), and at the same time the CD is a creation of an experi-
ence, where an experience (a piece of music) is transformed into a product
to make it possible for others to experience the experience without being
present when it actually takes place. The CD is a product that recreates the
experience in surroundings other than the one in which the experience took
place for others to experience it. Most often an experience that has taken
place in a recording studio is transformed into an experience in your own
living room. The live recordings even try to capture the mood of the experi-
ence when it actually was performed to give the listener the experience of
being present at the concert.
The CD is the product, but the experience is more than just the product.
Pine and Gilmore (1999) emphasize that the business has to develop an
appropriate theme for an experience, and that is the major challenge for the
business. ‘The key to successfully theming an experience really lies in deter-
mining what will actually prove to be compelling and captivating’ (Pine and
Gilmore, 1999, p. 49). It is not the CD in itself which makes it successful,
but making it a compelling and captivating experience for the consumer
makes it attractive to the customer. This is where the Danish indies have to
work hard to get the customer to buy their products, and this is the concern
of the present chapter.
Jensen (2006) states that, if one wants to ‘succeed in the future you have
to be a storyteller. The story is what is central’ (p. 56). It is the businesses
that are able to construct a captivating story about the experience which
succeed. Jensen talks about the story in the same way as Pine and Gilmore
talk about the theme. It concerns how the consumer is captivated by the
experience. The entrepreneurs of the Danish music industry construct these
stories or themes about the experiences they are selling in order to become
successful. Jensen mentions that ‘many of the small suppliers have a story
Entrepreneurs in music 113
which is so good that they do not need to advertise – the tale (or story) tells
itself. The big, on the other hand, need a huge advertising budget. There are
small-scale economics in the experience economy’ (p. 18). This picture
partly fits with the Danish music industry, and partly not. It fits in the sense
that some artists and CDs are sold by word-of-mouth, and by being the
new, rebellious and not yet commercialized music, while others sell by being
the superstars that we all love and buy (and have to buy before our neigh-
bours). The fact that the big multinational labels in the music industry have
marketing budgets far beyond those of the small independent labels makes
it very difficult for the indies to compete with the multinationals in terms of
traditional marketing and distribution. The indies have to seek other and
more innovative ways to compete on the markets, as will be highlighted and
illustrated later in the chapter.
Stories appeal to the heart rather than to the brain, thus it is the emo-
tions and the stories that matter, which is why Jensen (2006) talks about a
dream society where ‘the market for dreams eventually will be larger than
the market for realities. Markets for emotions will overshadow markets for
physical products’ (Jensen, 2006, p. 31). In that way ‘all companies in the
future sell emotions’ (Jensen, 2006, p. 59). Jensen underlines the importance
of stories and emotions in the experience (or dream) society. This chapter
underlines that tales (stories) and passion (emotions) are part of experience
creation of the entrepreneurs in the Danish music industry.
The purpose of the chapter is to argue that the entrepreneurs’ experience
creation in the Danish music industry is infused with passion. The idea that
entrepreneurs are driven by profits alone (for example, von Mises, 2000)
does not hold for the Danish indies as the majority of them actually do not
profit from their label. The chapter will argue that it is their passion for
music and being part of the music industry that makes these entrepreneurs
go on with their endeavour despite the obvious lack of profits. Thus the
chapter adds ‘passion’ to the drivers that other researchers mention besides
profit (for example Schumpeter, 1934). If we are to understand what drives
these entrepreneurs’ experience creation, we have to introduce a new and
unique analysis which emphasizes passion and the emotions. This chapter
illustrates this argument by telling the tale (van Maanen, 1988) of a pas-
sionate and economically unsuccessful entrepreneur in the Danish music
industry and his experiences with experience creation.
The analysis requires us to look at experience creation at three different
levels. Firstly, there is the experience construction made by the entrepreneur
of the experience; this includes the product (the music, the artist) and how
it is designed, marketed and how the label is managed and organized.
Secondly, the tale creates the entrepreneur’s experience of being an entre-
preneur in music, which is based upon the tale told by the entrepreneur in
the interview (see below for further elaboration of this and its methodolo-
gical aspects). Thirdly, the chapter constructs the experience of interview-
ing a specific entrepreneur in the Danish music industry. The researcher
creates his experience of the entrepreneur, the label and the music through
the experience of the interview, as this is part of the tale as well.
The chapter is structured as follows. The next section briefly outlines the
methodology of the chapter. This is followed by the theoretical part, which
starts with a short presentation of the three perspectives on emotions
(Fineman, 2000; Mangham, 1998). It also adds a fourth perspective,
namely ‘the passionate field’, arguing why it is needed, and how it supple-
ments the three existing perspectives. The fourth perspective also discusses
what drives entrepreneurs and argues that passion has to be considered an
important entrepreneurial drive.
The fourth perspective has been developed by the author to capture a
certain field, where passion and emotions are interpreted as central to
analysing, interpreting and understanding that field, meaning that the
Danish indies (the field) are passionate about their own label, the music
they produce and the music industry. Researchers in this field have to take
this into account, when they interpret the field. If they do not, the inter-
pretations are unlikely to reflect the field they investigate and miss some-
thing of central importance.
The passion of the entrepreneurs in the field and the researcher studying
the field are presented in a narrative (Bruner, 1991; Czarniawska, 1998) or
tale (van Maanen, 1988). The tale (narrative) is based on an interview
the researcher conducted with the entrepreneur, owner and director of an
independent Danish label: AGM. The tale (narrative) underlines that ‘we
don’t learn our feelings through factual statements but through stories’
(Mazzarella, 2001, p. 66), and it seems (at least to me) that emotion and
passion are more easily expressed and conveyed in the narrative form than
in more traditional scientific discourse, as such discourse deliberately
avoids the emotions. The tale being an interview underlines that ‘conversa-
tion is always interwoven with feelings and emotions’ (Stacey, 2000, p. 363).
3 METHOD
The tale is used as an analytical device to practise what is preached. Jensen

(2006) emphasizes how central the story or the tale is to experiences. The
story (tale) is what experience creation is based upon, according to Jensen,
and the chapter creates the reading experience of the analysis accordingly.
The tale is based upon one interview with one entrepreneur in the Danish
music industry: Anders Eigen, the founder and owner of AGM. This
particular interview has been selected from more than 20 interviews that the
researcher has conducted with Danish indies. The interviews were con-
ducted between 1998 and 2006. The first two interviews were conducted in
1998, of which that with Anders Eigen was one. The interview was tape-
recorded and the recordings have been played and analysed several times
over the years. The interview with Anders Eigen about AGM has been
selected for the tale in his article as it is an extreme case (Flyvbjerg, 2004).
Extreme cases ‘often reveal more information’ (Flyvbjerg, 2004, p. 425) and
highlight what is being studied. Although the case of AGM is extreme, it is
not all that extreme in the field of the Danish indies regarding these entre-
preneurs’ passion for the music and their labels. The data show that all the
entrepreneurs in the Danish music industry which have been interviewed
are infused with passion in the same way the tale reveals that Anders Eigen
is. It is only a matter of degree.
The data that reveal the passion of the entrepreneurs in the Danish music
industry are empirically based, as they are supported by more than 20 inter-
views with approximately 15 labels (some labels have been interviewed two
and three times during the almost eight years of investigation). Besides the
formal interviews with the Danish indies, the researcher has had many
informal talks with the independent labels over the years. The interviews
and the informal talks have provided the researcher with an understanding
of the organizational field (DiMaggio and Powell, 1991) of the Danish
indies, which highlights some of their similarities and differences, and one
common feature is their passion for music and what they are doing (which
receives further elaboration in the tale).
The focus upon passion and emotion in this chapter is going upstream,
since passion and ‘Emotions have . . . long been considered embarrassing
as a topic of serious academic research’ (Mazzarella, 2001, p. 65). The emo-
tional embarrassment is understandable within the (neo-) positivistic par-
adigm (Guba, 1990), where the researcher strives to be objective and
neutral. But it is certainly not understandable within a constructivist para-
digm (ibid.), where the subjective interpretation of the researcher is the
heart of the matter, as emotions and passion are an integrated part of the
subjective interpretation made by the researcher. The research the chapter
is based upon has been undertaken from within the constructivist paradigm
(ibid., 1990).
Passion is seen as an immanent part of the field by both the researched
and the researcher. Therefore, it is reflected in the researcher’s relation to
and interpretations of the field. It could be said (and now has been so) that
the analysis is lacking a very important element indeed, if passion is
ignored. In constructivist research the subjective interpretations of the field
(by the researcher) always have an emotional side, as emotions are part of
the subject. The constructivist researcher underlines the credibility of both

himself and his interpretations by making explicit the passion and emo-
tions upon which these interpretations rest. By making emotions and
passion part of his research, the researcher also makes emotions and
passion a source for reflection regarding both the field and his own relation
to the field. The researcher’s reflections upon his own relation to the field
and their consequences for his own interpretations contribute to a better
understanding of the research process.
Passion and emotions are always part of the analysis, but are now mostly
implicit, as researchers are certainly not expected to express their passion
and emotions explicitly in a scientific text. Researchers can be seen as ‘emo-
tional labour’ (Fineman, 2000). Researchers are not told ‘to smile and be
friendly’ like most other service workers or to show emotional involvement
in Body Shop and the things the Body Shop supports (Martin, Knopoff
and Beckman, 2000). Instead researchers are told (expected) to be objec-
tive, distant and without emotions regarding the empirical field. It is this
type of ‘emotional labour’ the chapter goes against. Instead, it agrees with
Kleinman and Copp (1993) that ‘we can learn a good deal more from the
field by treating our feelings as aids to analysis rather than hindrances’
(foreword, p. viii).
4 THEORIES
The theoretical part of the chapter is about theories of emotions in organ-

izations and the entrepreneurial theory on drivers. The chapter first looks
at the three perspectives concerning emotions in organizations discussed by
Fineman (2000) and Mangham (1998). The chapter contributes a fourth
perspective, called ‘the passionate field’, and this perspective is developed
to capture the importance of passion within the field of Danish indies. The
passionate field also discusses the drivers of entrepreneurs and argues that
passion should be seen as such a driver for entrepreneurs. The chapter is
theoretically innovative in developing a fourth perspective on emotions, by
developing passion as a driver for entrepreneurs, and by combining the the-
ories of emotions and drivers and relating them to the field of the Danish
indies.
4.1 The Three Perspectives
Both Mangham (1998) and Fineman (2000) present three perspectives con-
cerning emotions: while their terminology differs, the contents are much the
same as presented in Table 6.1.
Table 6.1 Perspectives concerning emotions
Mangham Fineman
Emotions are:
1. Measurable bodily reactions Emotions interfere with rationality
2. Rational and functional (instruments) Emotions serve rationality
3. ‘Ways of seeing’ Emotions and rationality intertwine
Source: Based on Mangham (1998) and Fineman (2000).
Perspective 1 measurable bodily reactions/emotions interfere with

rationality
In this perspective emotions can and should be measured scientifically.
Emotions can be measured with the right instruments, meaning that they
can be determined objectively, by measuring the bodily reactions that a
certain perception triggers (and thereby its emotional effects as well). The
assumptions of perspective 1 are that we have the same physiological reac-
tion each and every time we feel joy, sadness or indifference, and that we do
not have the same physiological reaction for different emotions. If the last
was the case, it would not be possible to distinguish the emotions we are to
measure. Whether it is so or not has yet to be proved, meaning that it has
not been possible to find and measure the physiological consequences of all
emotions.
Emotions are seen as something unnatural, which we have to avoid if we
are to remain men of reason and science (a view which still prevails and
dominates most sciences). If we are to be objective and scientific, passion
and emotions are to be eliminated (or at least minimized). ‘From the time
of Plato and the Stoics, the passions have been routinely characterized as
irrational, inexplicable and unnatural elements which, given their head, will
undermine and enslave reason, the essential and defining characteristic of
humans’ (Hume, cited in Norton, 1993, p. 26)’ (Mangham, 1998, p. 53). In
short if we let ourselves be controlled by passion and emotions it is nothing
less than the end of human civilisation as we know it.
Perspective 2 rational and functional (instruments) / emotions serve

rationality
In perspective 2 we can freely choose amongst our emotions. Thereby, emo-
tions can be used deliberately and functionally by the individual to
influence and change his situation. We choose our own emotions as a tool
(an instrument) to realize our strategy and reach our goals. Emotions
always become functional, as they serve the rationality of each individual.
It should be underlined, though, that this does not imply that emotions are
rational in an objective sense. They are rational and functional for the indi-
vidual who uses them whether they are objectively rational or not. The
choice of emotions is made freely by the individual – it is not a choice deter-
mined by objectivity.
Emotions always have a purpose; they are tools (means) that realize these
purposes (ends) and thereby emotions become rational and functional ways
to deal with uncertain situations. Emotions become actions, we ‘force’ upon
ourselves, when they are considered necessary (functional) in the given sit-
uation. This can be related to ‘bounded emotionality’ in the Body Shop
(Martin, Knopoff and Beckman, 2000), where the employees, by choosing
the demanded emotions, are being rational and functional in the Body
Shop. In the same way it is an emotional tool ‘to smile and be friendly’ for
the service worker in the ‘moments of truth’ (Hochschild, 1983). Harré and
Gillett (1994) modified this by emphasizing that the individual choice can
be determined by the discourse and the corporate culture as well as free will.
Perspective 3 ‘ways of seeing’ / emotions and rationality intertwine

The third perspective intertwines emotions and rationality, as Fineman
(2000) points out. Emotions are cognitive, physiological, interpreted and felt,
meaning that the causality between emotions and actions disappears, as our
current interpretations and emotions are determined by former interpreta-
tions and emotions, which guide the current interpretations and emotions in
a process where both interpretations and emotions are social constructions
which are woven into former constructions of emotions and interpretations.
In perspective 3, emotions are social constructions that make it possible
for us to perceive, recognize and understand a given situation. Emotions
become ‘ways of seeing’; when we feel a certain way, we will at the same
time understand a certain way – believing is seeing (Weick, 1979). ‘The
important contribution here is the idea that feelings incorporate and call
for definition, and then for further definition. Articulations of what we feel
are never definite, never complete, the feelings themselves alter simply
because we are reflecting and redefining’ (Mangham, 1998, p. 63).
4.2 The Fourth Perspective: the Passionate Field
Entrepreneurial studies come in many shapes and forms, often as stories or

biographies of entrepreneurs and their companies (Steyaert and Bouwen,
1997). These stories and biographies are often stories about the hardship
the dedicated entrepreneur went through to succeed in spite of them (or
fail because of them). These stories are about human lives and dedicated
individuals, but still the entrepreneurial research (as research in general)
seems to disregard emotions and passion. This is particularly peculiar

regarding entrepreneurs, as they quite often are emotionally attached to
and passionate about their products and/or companies.
Entrepreneurs must have something that drives them on. If I had to mention one
thing, which drives me on in my life, I would choose passion any time. (Anita
Roddick, founder of Body Shop, Roddick, 1992, p. 7)
The entrepreneur literature often mentions the dedicated and passionate

entrepreneur, but despite that the theories on what drives entrepreneurs do
not put much emphasis (if any at all) on passion as a driver. The quotation
from Anita Roddick shows passion does play a role for some entrepreneurs
(and for a great many of them in the Danish music industry). Entrepreneur
theory seems to lack an important driver, as passion is not considered.
When entrepreneur theories mention drivers, they primarily focus on
profits. Von Mises (2000) takes the liberal view that the market and the
entrepreneurs are profit-driven. The profit is the regulator of the market,
and the entrepreneurs which profit are those who anticipate the future
demands of the consumers and judge the future prices more correctly than
others. The entrepreneurs have to make decisions, and the right decisions
are those which serve the consumer and thereby the entrepreneur as well,
because in a market-driven economy it is the entrepreneurs that serve the
customers, thus earning profit, and earning profit is what drives the entre-
preneurs in their decision making and their work.
Granovetter (2000) mentions that profit is not sufficient to explain what
the drivers of entrepreneurs are and what sustains their firms. Trust also
plays an important role in sustaining a firm and in driving on the entrepre-
neur, which makes Granovetter (2000) conclude that non-economic and
institutional factors play a role for entrepreneurs as well as profits.
Strategies for building trust are emphasized, and these strategies seem well-
suited for small enterprises. Arrow (2000) is more specific about the advan-
tages of small and large firms. The larger firms have more resources and
capital than smaller firms and better access to funds. The small firms have
problems in getting funds and have themselves less capital and fewer
resources than larger firms. On the other hand, small firms have faster and
more flexible decision-making processes than their larger competitors.
Arrow’s (2000) insights are reflected in the Danish music industry. The issue
of trust pointed out is also part of the industry, but not only for the indies.
It goes for all the labels, as the Danish music industry is rather small, so
everyone more or less knows, or knows of, one another; consequently, if
you are not trusted and regarded as reliable, this will travel fast in the small
circles of the industry.
Burt (2000) talks about social structure and networks being important to
sustain a business and make it grow, pointing out that those entrepreneurs
with well-structured networks (networks are social capital) obtain higher
rates of return (profits). It is how the entrepreneur is connected to social
structure which indicates the volume of resources held by the entrepreneur.
The focus on social structure and networks are instruments to obtain the
goal (profits), as profits are the main driver of the entrepreneur. The entre-
preneur has to apply the other determinants mentioned in order to realize
the profits that he is driven by, almost in the same way as Granovetter
pointed to trust and reliability as the non-economic and institutional
factors that drive entrepreneurs.
Schumpeter (1934, 2000) is more explicit about other drivers than profits
for the entrepreneur. Though profits are clearly important, Schumpeter
also discusses three other drivers, namely, the dream and will to found a
private kingdom, the will to conquer and the joy of creating. The first driver
is very much about making oneself immortal by building a business (or
kingdom) that will stand there as a legacy long after the entrepreneur is
gone. Many family businesses have developed into such giant corporations
(or kingdoms). The second driver, about the will to conquer, is seen very
much as a drive or need for power. The entrepreneur is driven to conquer
and succeed as part of their personality established in their early childhood.
The third driver, about the joy of creating, is the one closest to passion, but
it is not quite the same, as you can be driven by the joy of creating without
being passionate about the whole endeavour. The joy of creating can even
make you avoid getting passionate about the products and the enterprise,
as it is the process of creating that drives you, not the entrepreneurial
endeavour as such. The borders between the joy of creating (and to some
extent the other two drivers as well) and passion are blurred, as the passion
for creating might be intertwined with the passion of making something of
what you create. It is important to supplement the drivers, Schumpeter
mentions, with passion as a driver, as passion can be (and is) the most
important driver for many an entrepreneur. The empirical data of the entre-
preneurs in the Danish music industry most certainly confirm that, as is
illustrated and argued in the forthcoming tale of AGM.
The Danish indies are ambivalent about the turbulent and changing
markets (world) of today. The indies see the markets changing rapidly and
relatively unpredictably, but at the same time they see themselves as
working hard, continuously, dedicated and long-term, producing the music
for their label. Turbulence seems an immanent part of the music industry
but so does stability, since the indies see themselves facing the long, hard
way, working long hours continuously to make it in the business (there are
no shortcuts). In the world of the indies the paradox of transformation and
reproduction is an immanent part of their lives, with the two forces being
present simultaneously (Stacey, 2003).
The music scene is changing fast, with new fads coming and going all the
time, but the indies (or at least the great majority of them) do not follow
the fads and chase the fast money. They are working hard and ‘long-term’
with their artists in order to get the music they love on the (unpredictable
and uncontrollable) markets. ‘You can’t hurry love, you just have to wait’
(The Supremes, 1966). These lines from the old Supremes song seem to
characterize the indies very well, since it is the love and passion for the
music, the artists and the music industry that is the inextinguishable fire
which drives these entrepreneurs. Not with great speed down ‘the yellow
brick road’, but at a steady pace on ‘a road to nowhere’ sprinkled with hard
and passionate work.
In perspective 2, ‘bounded emotionality’ (see above), where emotions are
used functionally in the Body Shop (Martin, Knopoff and Beckman, 2000)
or among flight attendants, are mentioned. Hochschild (1983) quotes from
an instruction course for stewardesses, when she writes: ‘Now girls, I want
you to go out there and really smile. Your smile is your biggest asset. I want
you to go out there and use it. Really smile. Really lay it on’ (Hochschild,
1983, p. 4). Also, Hochschild mentions two ways to act, when managing
emotions. Surface acting, where the acting changes how we appear out-
wardly, and deep acting, where ‘the actor does not try to seem happy or sad
but expresses a real feeling that has been self-induced’ (Hochschild, 1983,
p. 35). In this fourth perspective bounded emotionality and acting are
replaced by ‘pure passion’. The distinction between surface and deep acting
still involves acting. The passion of the entrepreneurs in the Danish music
industry goes beyond acting. They are authentic in the sense that they are
not acting. Passion is an immanent part of them and their lives. They
cannot stop being passionate without stopping being entrepreneurs and
humans as well. They are living their lives as the stories they are construct-
ing about their self-identity (Giddens, 1991) and part of that is being pas-
sionate, but not in the sense that they keep saying how passionate and
authentic they are. They tell about their love for what they are doing and
how it is what drives them on. When they talk about authenticity it is
related to their self-identity as a label. They all consider themselves authen-
tic and ‘true’ independent labels (as they define independent labels in ways
that make their own label turn out as such).
Pure passion is also important amongst the entrepreneurs of the Danish
music industry as they seem to be unable to do anything else than follow
their passion and love for music and the industry they are working in, and
are part of (‘ways of seeing’– the third perspective of emotion). The steady
road of hard and passionate work (mentioned above) is also the road of no
return. Entrepreneurs (as Anita Roddick stated) are very often character-
ized by the passion they have for their product and / or enterprise. In the
empirical field of this chapter, the Danish indies are emotional and pas-
sionate about every product (CD) they produce, every artist they sign, their
label and the industry, as the industry reflects the music they love and
cannot help producing.
Most Danish indies are not making any money, but that is not keeping
them from producing the music they live and breathe. In that way the field
is driven by emotions and passion.
Are you passionate?

Are you living like you talk
Are you dreamin’ how
That you’re goin’ to the top?
Are you loving it?

Can you ever get enough of it?
Is it everything?
A love that never stops
(Neil Young, 2002)
Interpretation and emotion are two sides of the same coin (as mentioned
in perspective 3), as the interpretations these entrepreneurs have of the
music industry, their label and music are part of their passion which is also
part of the interpretations. In this way interpretations and passion become
social constructions woven into the former interpretations, emotions and
passion. There is no causality between interpretations, emotions and
passion, they are all an immanent part of the passionate field. Therefore,
the field cannot be described, comprehended and understood without emo-
tions and passion. Passion is a driving force in the field. Without passion
these entrepreneurs would have given up a long, long time ago, but they are
still here, and they still believe that they will make it somehow and that the
music industry would certainly be worse off without them. Of course there
are indies that shut down, it happens all the time, but all the time new labels
emerge to replace them. This means that the Danish music industry con-
stantly has a fertile undergrowth of indies, who enthusiastically and pas-
sionately produce their music, because of the extinguishable fire which
drives them on.
The passionate field is obviously linked to the third perspective as both
perspectives are rooted in the constructivist paradigm. The main difference
between the two is that, in the fourth perspective, it does not make any
sense to analyse the field without emotions and passion being a central and
immanent part of the analysis, because, if it is not so, there will be an

obvious reductionism in the interpretations of the field that would make it
impossible to interpret the field the way it is seen by the indies themselves.
Again we move into the territory of no causality, as it is an interpretation
that the field is passionate (believing is seeing), which makes it impossible to
interpret the field without passion if it is to be comprehended and under-
stood. This is unavoidable in constructivist research, since interpretations of
the field are all we are able to construct, meaning that there is no way we can
actually decide if the field is passionate or not (as that would mean calling
upon an objective solution in a subjective paradigm). But when passion and
emotions are interpreted as an important part of the way the entrepreneurs
in the Danish music industry see themselves, this should also be reflected in
the reflective interpretation of the field made by the researcher.
5 TALKING OF TALES
The tale which follows both reflects the self-understanding of the entrepre-
neur Anders Eigen (founder and director of AGM) and reflects upon this
understanding by including the reflections and emotions of the researcher.
The telling of a tale is inspired by the three different types of tales pre-
sented by van Maanen (1988), namely the realistic tale, the confessional tale
and the impressionist tale. The inspiration comes from all three types of
tales, as it is argued that the tales are more easily separated theoretically
than in the actual telling of tales.
The tale contains elements from all three types of tales which tend to
make the categorization of the tales more disturbing than illuminating. It
is a tale that, it is hoped, will startle and capture its readers (audience) by
not leaving out the teller of the tale (as is most familiar in scientific texts).
The intention of the tale is to construct an experience without being a con-
fessional tale: although some of the thoughts of the teller are integrated
into the tale, they are so in order to reflect and theorize about the tale told
in the interview by the interviewee rather than an attempt to get a confes-
sional tale.
The tale is my interpretation regarding the entrepreneur, the label and the
reflections about it, as it is my construction and my use of the narrative
device (Czarniawska, 1998). The reader is free to deconstruct and (re)con-
struct it, in accordance with the way the reader interprets and understands
the tale. My aim is to construct a tale and an experience, hoping that my
interpretations of emotions and passion contribute to a new and/or
different understanding about the place of emotions in organizations and
passion as a driver for entrepreneurs.
5.1 Telling the Tale of a True Entrepreneur
It was summer in the Danish capital (Copenhagen), but still it was a grey
day, which is far from unusual. I had biked across town to the office of
AGM to conduct an interview with Anders Eigen, the director and founder
of the label. I have to confess that I did not see much of the city during my
bike-ride across town, as my head was preoccupied with the forthcoming
interview that I had been excited about ever since I arranged it over the
phone. AGM was one of the better-known Danish indies and was consid-
ered a role-model for a lot of other indies. Besides, the founder of the label
was well-known in the Danish music industry and in the media.
The office of AGM was located in one of the more prominent parts of
Copenhagen, but certainly not in an impressive building. The building was
rather dull and ordinary and could have been found almost anywhere in the
city. I parked my bike in front of the building and entered with high expec-
tations for the forthcoming interview.
I knocked at the door to the office of AGM Music and entered when
someone inside shouted ‘come in’. The office consisted of two sparsely fur-
nished rooms, where a lot of different activities were going on. There was
not much in the rooms that reminded me that this was a label. It could have
been any kind of office, where presentation to the ‘customer’ at first glance
did not have first priority.
‘Hello, who are you?’ One of the people in the room addressed me and
called me back to earth. I told her my name and that I was there to do an
interview with Anders Eigen. She told me that he had told her to tell me
that he was going to be late for the interview. I was welcome to sit down and
wait for his arrival. I sat down, disappointed at first, but soon realized that
this was an excellent opportunity to sit and observe what was going on, and
it also meant that I had the chance to chat with those present in the room.
From observing and chatting with them I felt I got a notion of what was
going on at the label. I learned that those present were both employees of
and artists on the label, and they were working on some ideas about how
to promote those artists present. It did not surprise me that the artists were
taking part in the work at the label – I had already heard that in former
interviews with other indies, but this was the first time I had observed it.
The interior of the rooms was forgotten, all my attention was focused on
the persons and the activities in the rooms. I was feeling comfortable here
in the midst of the label and its activities, while I was thinking about staging
(Pine and Gilmore, 1999) and witnessing some of the backstage work being
conducted by the artists, who normally play frontstage. When they are not
in the spotlight they do backstage work at the label, making things that are
not embarrassing to them. Most of the work at a label is backstage, as
AGM and indies in general have a hard time getting noticed by the con-
sumers. My mind briefly touched upon the idea that the interview I was
going to have with Anders Eigen was a kind of staging in itself, as some
commotion made me aware that Anders had arrived.
My observation, chat and thoughts made me feel as though I had just got
there, when Anders Eigen arrived half an hour late for the scheduled inter-
view. He was obviously busy and told me that he was delayed by unforeseen
problems with one of the label’s artists. He then went away in a hurry to
update and be updated by some of the others at the label, while at the same
time he was saying hello to everyone in the rooms. After a while he returned
to me and we sat down at some distance from the others to conduct the
interview. He told me he did not have much time as he had to manage a
concert later. This warning discouraged me a little bit, but not for long. I
forgot it as soon as the interview began. And as it turned out, there was
really no reason to worry: the interview went on for almost an hour.
Anders started out by telling how the label was founded in 1992, after he
left another label, where they produced one record. He left the other label
as it did not work well. He had started out on his own, and he is obviously
proud to talk about Hotel Hunger, the first band that AGM produced, first
an EP in the autumn of 1993 and then the first ‘real’ record in January 1994.
When Anders talks about Hotel Hunger it is as though the name of the
band is tattooed into his heart. His passion about the band is almost over-
whelming. It is also the only band AGM has produced so far that actually
made it, and provided some surplus for the label. All other artists so far
have contributed to the debts of the label. Hotel Hunger left for a major
label (EMI), but Anders is still the manager of the band and attends all
their concerts, and he tells me that he knows all their songs by heart and
always sings along through the entire concert.
It was hard not to be moved by Anders’ dedication and enthusiasm about
Hotel Hunger, as we were sitting there talking about them. I know the band
very well, like them a lot, and have actually been to a couple of their con-
certs. Suddenly I realized that we were sitting there enthusiastically dis-
cussing the music of Hotel Hunger. We did that for a while, and then we
‘calmed down’ again. He continued the story of AGM by telling me that he
is the sixth (non-playing) member of Hotel Hunger, meaning that he gets a
sixth of all the income Hotel Hunger gets from EMI. That is how he got
something out of Hotel Hunger signing with EMI (besides still having
booking and management for the band). It seems to me that it is important
that he made such a deal, which still makes him part of and in touch with
the band that has such a big place in his heart, even though he talks in more
general terms about AGM having to let the artists go to a major label, if
the artist leaves, because AGM then no longer has the capacity to do the
necessary work for the band (only the majors have the appropriate
resources for that).
Another important part of the AGM story is that, when he founded
AGM, Anders worked with the ‘total concept’ idea, meaning that he had
to have and make it all: the label, booking, management, a rehearsal room
and a club (called Eigen’s Ballroom). The rehearsal room would make the
artists more ready, when they went to the studio to record, which would
save some of the expensive studio time. The artists also were promoted by
playing live at the club.
The ‘total concept’ was right in theory, but it did not work in practice.
Suddenly Anders realized that there was no more money, and the company
that owned AGM and the Ballroom went bankrupt. After this Anders lost
the rehearsal room and the Ballroom, but he still had the smaller part of
his company: the label, booking and management. Anders has been
holding on to that ever since, under the name AGM. The positive side of
the bankruptcy was that Anders could focus on the label, and get rid of
some of the confusion that came with running the total concept.
‘The total concept’ was an innovation in the sense that it was a new com-
bination that consisted primarily of employing existing elements in a
different way (Schumpeter, 2000), which Anders did by putting them all
together in one concept. The parts were well-known, but they were carried
out in a new combination as an enterprise, and individuals who carry out
such new combinations are entrepreneurs, according to Schumpeter
(1934). The problem for Anders and AGM was that the concept was not
adopted on the market. It was an innovation that was brought to the
market, but not adopted by the market, so it did not succeed. Anders was
caught in a situation where he came up with an idea that proved not to be
successful when it was launched. The dilemma of the entrepreneur is that
the success of new combinations depends upon intuition, the capacity to
see things in a way that afterwards proves to be true, even though it cannot
be established at the moment (Schumpeter, 2000). The entrepreneur has to
enact their own beliefs and products, hoping that they become successful.
Anders did that with the total concept, and it did not work, and AGM (and
the other indies) is doing that with each and every CD they produce and
put on the market.
Anders tells me that the main difference between AGM and the majors
(short for the multinational labels in the music industry) is promotion. The
majors buy promotion and are good at marketing. AGM cannot afford to
buy promotion and has only limited resources for it. AGM are unable to
match the majors on promotion and marketing (Anders is here unknow-
ingly confirming Arrow (2000) and his conclusions regarding the
differences between large and small firms, discussed above). Therefore,
AGM has to do something crazy (or innovative and ‘creative’ as it is called

in the modern business language) that no-one else would do.
Just as Anders is talking about doing something crazy, a lot of noise
interrupts us, as a group of youths enter the office. They come over and say
hello to Anders. They are obviously excited. I realize from the conversation
that the boys are a band signed by AGM, they are playing tonight and the
TV will be at the concert. When the worst turbulence is over, Anders tells
me that one of his crazy ideas was to sign this band. Denmark has not had
a kid punk band for a long time, so now the band gets a lot of publicity
both on radio and on television. Anders emphasizes that they are very good
and fans of Hotel Hunger.
The excitement becomes even greater amongst the kids when Anders
confirms that Hotel Hunger will attend their concert tonight. Anders finds
it is important that there be a family feeling among the AGM artists (and
at the label in general). The idea is that the artists attend each other’s con-
certs to back each other up. Owing to the close relations between Hotel
Hunger and Anders, he still sees Hotel Hunger as part of the AGM family.
The announcement of Hotel Hunger’s presence at the concert raises the
level of noise to a degree where normal conversation is out of the question.
The excitement and the close relations between AGM and the label’s
artists remind me that the indies emphasize that they work with their artists,
compared to the majors that often work against them. I find myself
reflecting that, indies identifying themselves in opposition to the majors,
makes it crucial to them that they have a good relationship with the artists.
They all agree with Anders that they would never sign an artist they did not
like, because it would make it very difficult to do all the hard work it would
take. This brings to mind Granovetter (2000), who emphasizes the impor-
tant role trust plays in the shaping, growth and sustaining of the firm. Trust
adds to a successful construction of a small enterprise, but, in the same
breath, Granovetter (2000) also warns that, when the small enterprise
reaches a certain size, the next step is to go beyond the immediate family
connections, and thereby beyond the borders of trust, if the firm is to con-
tinue its growth, and such borders are not easily crossed. Small firms are
reluctant to cross these borders, and in that way they restrict their own
success and growth by impairing the profitability of the firm.
My reflections also move in another direction. It is the lack of eco-
nomic resources that ‘forces’ the small enterprise (AGM and other indies
included) to make do with what they have. The indies apply bricolage (Levi-
Strauss, 1966) and improvisation (Weick, 2001; Kamoche et al., 2002). The
indies have to do this, as they are convinced that they have to do something
crazy to get attention and stick it out. Anders is not the only one who has
been mentioning this amongst the indies I have interviewed. All the indies
improvise with whatever is available in order to try to match the majors. The
way the indies apply bricolage and improvisation differs, as they have
different tools to bring together, and different minds to figure out how to
bring together the tools.
It reminded me that, although indies enact and make sense (Weick, 1979;
1995) of themselves in opposition to the majors, they have no common
opinion on what an indie is, or rather they differ in their view on what a real
indie is – reflecting their situation, enactment and sensemaking. ‘The inde-
pendent labels perceive independence in a way that makes the label itself
independent, which means that what an independent label is depends on the
eyes of the beholder’ (Darmer, 1998, p. 26).
I return to the present, as the noise level again becomes tolerable enough
to restart the interview. Inspired by my reflections, I ask Anders about his
view of the majors. Anders mentions that AGM is different from the majors,
but it is difficult for him to contemplate the majors as the personification of
evil. He knows them and they are not that evil. The ‘real’ enemy is to be
found elsewhere: developments within society and amongst the record
buyers (and those that have stopped doing that). Generally, the problem is
that people do not buy indie CDs, because (1) the CDs are often not in the
stores (we need good record stores), and (2) the CDs are not familiar enough
(we do not have the resources to compete on promotion and marketing).
Anders concludes: ‘No-one else but ourselves can change that, and in order
to change that we have to get better and better.’
Despite Anders’ views, the problems of the label are at a general socio-
political level. Paradoxically, to me, he sees his little label (and other labels
as well), as the ones to turn the tide and break the trend. Schumpeter (1934)
springs to my mind. He argued that it is swarms of entrepreneurs that cre-
atively deconstruct the existing order, in order for society to develop. I am
pretty sure that is not what Anders means. He has a more parochial view.
He thinks that AGM has to work harder to make it. In that way he repro-
duced his own ideas and the discourse of the indies as the hardworking,
passionate entrepreneurs which are up against the major resources of the
majors. This means that, despite Anders playing down the majors as the
enemy, they are still those Anders has to compete against to sell a declining
market. In that way, even when the distinction between majors and indies
is played down, it is reproduced (and to some extent enhanced) and has
great importance for the way Anders acts, talks and understands his label
and himself, as an indie entrepreneur, burning for the music and the artists
(especially Hotel Hunger).
Hotel Hunger keeps coming up in the interview, and it is obvious to me
that Anders is proud that Hotel Hunger made it, and he knows it was nec-
essary that they should go to a major label. Anders would certainly not have
felt good if their paths just parted here. Therefore, it is a very good thing
for Anders (and probably the band as well) that he still is part of it. It is
hard leaving a love like that behind. Fortunately, Anders did not have to do
so. This makes me realize how much the band and music actually mean to
Anders and how passionate he is about this interest of his: as he told me,
he has one interest and one interest only in his life: music. Calling it an
interest is to me too vague a word. Passion is more appropriate. The passion
is also expressed in the dream Anders has about the viability of the label,
as the realization of that dream would make it possible for Anders and
AGM to follow their passion for music, while the economy would take care
of itself. The dream is that ‘You have a pool of money, then you take some
of that money and produce some music, and it breaks even and the money
goes back into the pool. Then you can keep producing music and repro-
ducing the pool of money continuously.’
Without passion, Anders would not work so hard and invest so much to
make it in the music industry. Passion is the fuel that keeps AGM (and other
indies) going in an industry where fighting for survival is the name of the
game. Thanks to the passion, there will be ‘no retreat, no surrender’
(Springsteen, 1994) by AGM and the other indies in the music industry.
Passion makes them work hard and succeed against all odds because of the
human resources which somehow can always be found somewhere among
these passionate entrepreneurs of the music industry.
The passion is highlighted when Anders tells me about the economy of
the label. Only Hotel Hunger ever brought money to the label. For every
100DKR he invests in the label, he gets 10DKR in return. The debts of the
label escalate, despite the fact that he has already gone bankrupt early in
the history of the label with the ‘total concept’ idea, which made him lose
the rehearsal room and his club (Eigen’s Ballroom). Anders is still going on
with the label. This is only possible because, thanks to his passion for music,
he channels all his other sources of income into the label. The incomes from
booking and management are part of the label, as booking and manage-
ment was what was left when he went bankrupt. In his ‘business life’, Anders
is an entrepreneur as well. He has his own construction company, con-
structing and restoring buildings. It strikes me that Anders is an entrepre-
neur in a double sense, both in construction and in music. But he is truly a
musical entrepreneur in the sense that his income from the construction
company goes into the label, in order for him to continue doing what he
loves and what his heart tells him to do (or makes it impossible not to do),
that is, follow his only and true passion, producing music. Generally Anders
is very much engaged in everything he does. It dawns upon me during the
interview, where all the activities Anders is involved in become apparent: the
label, booking, management, concert and other arrangements, activities of
different kinds in the music industry and public life and his construction
company. It is very difficult not to be impressed by all the things Anders is
doing and not to like him for his great passion for music and his label.
5.2 Learning from the Tale
The tale highlights that experience creation amongst the Danish indepen-
dent labels drives on passion. The entrepreneurs of the Danish music indus-
try are passionately creating experiences that include the CD (the tangible
product), the design, the management, the organization and the marketing
of the experience. The product and the label become two sides of the same
coin in the case of the Danish indies, as each CD is part of the label. The
experience creation of each CD is intertwined in the experience creation of
the label, as the creation of the label to a great extent reflects the CDs and
artists of the label, making the life of a label an experience creation based
on a series of experience creations.
The tale shows both the experience creation of the passionate entrepre-
neurs of the Danish music industry and the experience creation of being an
entrepreneur in music. The entrepreneurs create both the experience that
they are selling and their own entrepreneurial experience, which pretty
much overlaps as they are, and identify with, what they produce (most of
them would not produce something or someone they did not like).
5.3 Concluding the Tale
Obviously talking about the label and its development brought up emo-
tions from the past and the passion of the label with its founder. I was cap-
tivated by the story as well. His enthusiasm and passion were contagious,
making me sit there on the edge of my chair, almost feeling part of it. I real-
ized the great place the label and its music have in his life and heart.
Retrospectively, it did not surprise me in the least, as this was the same
passion and enthusiasm I had felt and interpreted with every other indie I
had interviewed at that time. And it has not changed, I am still captivated
by the passion of these entrepreneurs of the Danish music industry, but it
is no longer a surprise to me. Today the opposite would surprise me, if I was
to experience it, which I doubt very much that I will.
The passion of the indies cannot help making this researcher admire
these entrepreneurs and being passionate about the field he is researching.
The sympathy for the indies is part of what makes researching them an
interesting and passionate endeavour that cannot (and certainly should
not) leave the researcher untouched either emotionally or in reporting his
research. The researcher cannot avoid emotions and passion being an
immanent part of his research. He can make them implicit by denying that
he is influenced by them, but that would take something essential and
important away from the research, reducing it to a stylistic exercise without
heart and soul – a reduction that would deprive the field of all that made it
worth studying in the first place. In the same way, music would not be music
if it had no heart and soul to touch us emotionally.
Inspired by AGM and the passionate field, the researcher ends in the
same situation as the indies he studies. He cannot do anything else but
express his sympathy, emotions and passion for those he researches, and
integrate emotions and passion in the research. Without the emotions and
passion both the field and the researcher would lose what made it worth
doing in the first place.
The chapter has shown how passion produces products and creates expe-
riences. Passion is the fuel that produces, markets, makes (and breaks)
artists, and manages and organizes the label. The chapter has argued that
passion is the stuff that creates experiences amongst the entrepreneurs in
the Danish music and researcher alike. Therefore passion has a role to play
in the analysis of what drives entrepreneurs, small enterprises in the Danish
music industry, and in the making of such an analysis.
Another conclusion of the chapter, which is more critical, would be to
emphasize that the whole chapter and its argument can be interpreted as
enactment (Weick, 1979), where I (passionately, I hope) constructed passion
as the central feature in and about the organizational field of the entrepre-
neurs in the Danish music industry. But at least it is an enactment I honestly
feel passionate about.
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7. The urban innovation network
geography of leisure experiences
Flemming Sørensen
1 INTRODUCTION
This chapter discusses the role of innovation networks of urban leisure

experiences. Leisure may be defined as activities taking place in discre-
tionary time (Bull et al., 2003; Thorkildsen, 1999). This definition rules out
experiences related to work or survival as being forms of leisure (though
the development of the experience economy (Pine and Gilmore, 1999)
increasingly blurs the boundaries). Leisure as defined above results in expe-
riences that arise from interactions between leisure participants and their
human and non-human surroundings (Lee and Shafer, 2002: 291). In this
chapter, the focus is further limited to leisure experiences that arise through
interactions in places supplied by businesses (private, semi-private or
public) located in urban spaces. It is this kind of business that, in the fol-
lowing, is referred to as the ‘urban leisure experience business’. This
excludes place-independent suppliers of leisure experiences, such as much
of the media, as well as other types of leisure consumed within the sphere
of the private home.
Urban leisure is today considered a significant vehicle for the regenera-
tion of local economics (Bull et al., 2003; Williams, 2003: 89). It has been
increasingly argued that urban areas’ offers of leisure experiences possess
the potential to attract new local residents, in particular the so-called ‘cre-
ative class’ who seek to live in places where just-in-time leisure experiences
are abundant and who in turn attract firms, thus sustaining business devel-
opment (Florida, 2002). Simultaneously, attracting urban leisure tourists
(visitors who stay overnight in urban areas in the pursuit of leisure experi-
ences) represents an increasing potential for generating income and
employment, boosting business opportunities, revitalizing urban areas, and
so on (Schofield, 2001; Hall, 2005: 193) and, indirectly, improving the image
of cities which in turn may be followed by investments in other economic
activities and population growth (Law, 1992). Therefore, the comparative
advantage of cities is no longer based solely on the provision of basic
134
The urban innovation network geography of leisure experiences 135
services and infrastructures (Florida, 2001) but, to a large degree, on the

offer of leisure experiences. In the global world, competition among towns
and cities has increased and consequently competition for tourists and new
resident has also increased (Schofield, 2001: 343). As in other competitive
environments, innovation becomes central for prosperity and survival.
Cities must therefore continually invest in their leisure products or feel the
consequences of diminishing attractiveness (Law, 1993: 170). Recent inno-
vation theory has argued that innovation networks are central for innova-
tion processes, and even more so in localized production systems where
spatial proximity among firms facilitates the formation of innovation net-
works which sustain an innovative environment (for example, Maskell and
Malmberg, 1999; Camagni and Capello, 2000: 118). As leisure experiences
relating to towns and cities are offered by a number of agglomerated leisure
firms (Williams, 2003: 89; Bull et al., 2003: 149–50), local innovation net-
works can be assumed to be of central importance also for the innovative-
ness within urban leisure which, therefore, may be a geographically
localized and networked phenomenon. However, the direction of innova-
tion in the urban leisure business may be influenced by the degree to which
innovation in leisure takes place in local networks, as such networks mainly
sustain innovation based on localized knowledge and information already
located locally. Conversely, non-local networks bring the possibility of
innovation based (for the local area) on new non-local knowledge. The geo-
graphical network configuration can therefore have consequences in terms
of the differentiation and uniqueness of the innovations resulting from
innovative processes and thus for the competitiveness of the urban leisure
business (cf. Florida, 2002).
This chapter seeks to illuminate the role of innovation networks sketched
above. Traditionally, research on leisure experiences has had a clear socio-
logical and consumer focus rather than a production and supplier focus,
and innovation in leisure as seen from the producer’s point of view has been
neglected as a research area (with leisure tourism being the exception).
Whereas ‘the experience economy’ (Pine and Gilmore, 1999) turns the focus
to the producer’s side of experiences, the understanding of innovation, and
of the role of networks within this experience economy, is still not devel-
oped. Furthermore, though place is central for much of the experience
economy (see, for example, Bærenholdt, 2007), the position of geography
in innovation of such place-dependent experiences has yet to be estab-
lished. Furthermore, this chapter will focus on a small town context. Prior
research has focused heavily on larger cities as smaller urban spaces or
towns do not possess a critical mass of attractions and facilities or the
desired ‘product’ that results from their synergy (Schofield, 2001: 343).
However, towns also increasingly seek to attract tourists as well as new
residents on the basis of the provision of leisure experiences, though the

scale on which they operate is of another magnitude than that of larger
cities. Compared to larger cities, towns may (if they do not possess a very
particular type of attraction) be capable of attracting visitors who are
already in the area, such as tourists in nearby resorts. Similarly, new resi-
dents do not come flying in from all over the world but will mainly arrive
from adjacent areas, and in particular, perhaps from larger cities nearby.
Thus the competition among towns in the attraction of tourists and new
residents is less global and more local.
Accordingly, the chapter emphasizes the geography of innovation net-
works in the experience economy. This is done by discussing the nature and
the geography of the urban leisure experience and its related business, com-
bining these considerations with geographical innovation network theory.
To illustrate empirically the functioning and role of innovation networks in
a small town leisure context, the case of the Danish town of Nykøbing
Falster (for its location, see Figure 7.2 below) will be discussed.
2 ON THE NATURE AND GEOGRAPHY OF URBAN

LEISURE EXPERIENCES
The leisure experience business (as defined in the introduction) includes a

variety of businesses, such as amusement parks, sports clubs, hospitality
firms, museums, art galleries and event firms. Though businesses are only
partly responsible for leisure provision in urban spaces, which is also made
available, for example, by social and voluntary organizations, ‘this com-
merce is today the leading engine driving leisure provision’ (Roberts, 2004:
14–15). These urban leisure businesses typically require central locations to
attract customers. This nature of much leisure consumption means that
most exist within the urban environments where the majority of the popu-
lation reside (Williams, 2003: 89), and as many visitors to city centres will
require several leisure offers during their visit, leisure businesses agglomer-
ate within urban areas (Bull et al., 2003: 149–50). This clustering of busi-
nesses makes the urban area attractive to visitors because the total
experience is perceived to be greater than the sum of the parts (Law, 1993:
128). Thus, individual urban leisure businesses provide only one element of
the clustered urban leisure experience which lies outside the control of indi-
vidual businesses (Schofield, 2001: 445). Furthermore, this ‘total’ leisure
experience is dependent on architectural, topographical and sociocultural
characteristics of the urban space, and of different services, such as trans-
portation (Schofield, 2001: 437). Thus synergies arise both from the
agglomeration of varied leisure businesses and from the combination of
these and urban physical, functional and sociocultural landscapes in which

they are located.
The urban leisure space attracts both local residents and tourists. For the
tourist, the urban centre is attractive because of its ‘specialist shops,
markets, cafes, trees, street furniture, and overall colour and vitality . . . its
bars, its restaurants and mix of diners and its street entertainers and their
music’ (Schofield, 2001: 440). These attractions are similar to those that
draw new residents, in particular the so-called ‘creative class’ (c.f. Florida,
2002) which demands ‘indigenous street-level culture – a teeming blend of
cafes, sidewalk musicians, and small galleries and bistros’ (Florida, 2002:
166). This similarity in tourists’ and local residents’ urban leisure experience
consumption has increased, which is explained by the de-differentiation of
different life-spheres in post-modern society (Urry, 1990) and in this case the
blurring of everyday activities and tourism: ‘People behave like tourists
most of the time, whether they are taking a vacation or conducting daily
activities’ (Lash and Urry, 1994). Therefore, urban areas are characterized
by high concentrations of visitor attractions and amenities that serve both
tourists and local residents (Schofield, 2001: 343). This increased similarity
between the two ‘segments’ means that more leisure businesses become
interdependent in the urban leisure-space. While some leisure businesses are
used mainly by local residents and others by tourists, they are all part of one
larger number of businesses creating the increasingly de-differentiated
leisure experience of the urban space.
However, time spent on leisure experiences in urban spaces constitutes
only a limited share of total time spent on leisure activities, of which many
(TV watching, bookreading and so on) take place at home (Williams, 2003:
106; Robinson and Godbey, 2005: 20). Nevertheless, home-based leisure is
geographically a less important differentiating factor than leisure experi-
ences offered in the urban leisure space. In the developed world, home
leisure experiences are accessible ubiquitously and, as such, the offer of
these leisure experiences has become ‘de-spatialized’. The urban leisure
experiences, on the other hand, continue to rely on place specific provision
and thus remain spatially fixed. Thus, what differentiates leisure space is
not home-based leisure but the experiences of the urban leisure spaces
outside the home. However, forces seem to work towards an inevitable de-
spatialization, also of urban leisure experiences, such as globalized urban
design trends (Gospodini, 2001: 928), and the proliferation of chain restau-
rants, chain attractions, chain hotels and the rest, eliminating differences
between urban leisure spaces (Florida, 2002: 228). Such ‘de-spatializing’
developments eradicate the diversity, uniqueness and authenticity of urban
leisure spaces and result in the ‘serial reproduction of cities’ (Law, 1992:
170): ‘An authentic place (. . .) offers unique and original experiences. Thus
a place full of chain stores, chain restaurants and nightclubs is not

authentic: not only do these venues look pretty much the same everywhere,
they offer the same experience you could have anywhere’ (Florida, 2002:
228). However, a certain differentiation of urban leisure space is imperative
for the competitiveness of urban areas as urban tourists increasingly
seek leisure activities in distinctive places rather than different activities
(Gospodini, 2001) and, equally, local residents value their urban sur-
roundings for their authenticity and uniqueness (Florida, 2002). ‘Authentic
uniqueness’, for example, in terms of history, culture, society and of urban
space morphology constituting a counter-structure to globalized design
trends (Gospodini, 2001: 928) is thus central for the competitive strength
of urban leisure experience spaces. It is doubtful that visitors will travel to
‘clone cities’ and therefore cities need to develop something distinctive or
specialized which may be based on something inherent in the place and its
history (Law, 1993: 170).
The factors highlighted here, namely the character of the urban leisure
experience; the agglomerated but varied nature of leisure businesses; the
de-differentiation of tourists’ and local residents’ leisure consumption; and
the significance of uniqueness of urban leisure spaces, are of importance
for the network geography of the urban leisure experience and its benefits,
to which we shall now turn.
3 THE INNOVATION NETWORK GEOGRAPHY OF

URBAN LEISURE EXPERIENCES
Networks consist of formal and informal relations among firms, organiza-

tions and other actors involved in the transfer of material and/or immate-
rial resources. They support innovations by facilitating the transfer of
information (Dyer and Singh, 1998), learning (Fischer, 1999) and co-
ordination of product development activities (Holmen et al., 2005). In a
spatial context, such innovation networks are supposed to exist within
agglomerations (such as industrial districts (e.g. Pyke et al., 1992; Milford
and McNaughton, 2000), innovative milieus (e.g. Camagni, 1995; Breschi
and Lissoni, 2001), clusters (e.g. Porter, 1990, 1998), and local productive
systems (e.g. OECD, 1997)). Within such agglomerations, innovation net-
works are sustained by the spatial proximity of businesses and support the
transfer of specialist tacit knowledge through face-to-face contacts (e.g.
Maskell and Malmberg, 1999; Coe and Townsend, 1998). However, owing
to their ability to distribute locally embedded knowledge mainly, such local
networks primarily favour incremental innovations, narrow development
trajectories and, thus, eventually to lead to entropic death (Grabher, 1993:
24; Capello, 1999; Asheim and Cooke, 1999: 153). Only when combined
with non-local networks will the long-term innovative development of
localized production systems therefore be secured (see Oinas and Malecki,
1999). This combination supplies agglomerations and their companies with
the supposed benefits of local networks of agglomerations providing high
benefits in terms of learning and innovation (Maskell and Malmberg,
1999), and of non-local networks providing additional and important
external information and learning benefits (Oinas and Malecki, 1999). On
the other hand, a more complex geography of innovation networks that
accepts the inexistence of a geographical ‘best practice’ of networks may be
drawn. The network geography of economic sectors then becomes related
to the sectors’ competitive dynamics and the resulting needs for different
types of learning (cf. Rowley et al., 2000; Ahuja, 2000) and to their spatial
configuration of non-spatial distances. In this sense economic distance
(referring to the position of economic activities relative to each other in
production systems) and cultural distance (which is important for learning
and communication processes as it makes certain types of messages
difficult to transmit and decode) (cf. Lundvall, 1992) between businesses at
the local compared with the non-local level may be decisive for the geo-
graphical network configurations of different sectors and in different places
(Sørensen, 2007).
In the urban leisure experience business, the specialization of inter-
dependent firms within one ‘sector’ of the economy within one location
can, as in other sectors characterized by agglomerations, be supposed to
enable local networks to form. This has been argued to be the case in
agglomerated tourist destinations (e.g. Tremblay, 1998), that is, urbanized
places in which tourists’ leisure consumption predominate over local pop-
ulations’ consumption. Such local destination networks may be essential
for successful destination development (Milne and Ateljevic, 2001: 374,
383) as they sustain innovations by facilitating information distribution
and learning (Gibson et al., 2005; Morrison et al., 2004; Halme, 2001). In
particular, local networks are considered essential for destinations charac-
terised by the concentration of small firms (Copp and Ivy, 2001; Morrison,
1998) as networks provide such with opportunities to overcome the disad-
vantages associated with their size (Milne and Ateljevic, 2001: 385) and
access to capabilities otherwise not accessible (Buhalis and Cooper, 1998:
339). Furthermore, leisure tourism is often dependent on free goods such
as natural resources, cultural attractions, townscapes, traffic systems and so
on which causes a need for collaborative development (Hjalager, 2002: 472).
In urban areas in which local populations’ leisure consumption plays a
more dominant role, small businesses typically dominate the leisure space
(Schofield, 2001) and free goods are central to the urban leisure experience
that consists of a mixture of elements which interact with one another and
provide a total urban experience. Furthermore, a greater variety of busi-
nesses become more interdependent as both tourist and local resident
markets consume/produce experiences within the same, as well as different,
types of businesses. Thus urban leisure could be assumed to be character-
ized by local networks which facilitate innovation, in similar ways as is
assumed to occur in other agglomerated sectors.
However, whereas the agglomeration literature assumes that agglomer-
ated firms are similar and thus prone to local networking (Sørensen, 2004),
this is not necessarily the case of the agglomerated urban leisure experience
business which includes different sorts of businesses. Within the urban
leisure space differentiation is essential as diverse leisure needs must be
satisfied and as competition is fierce in relation to attractive segments,
meaning that product differentiation is decisive for the survival of small
firms in particular (Schofield, 2001: 439). Whereas the fragmented nature
of leisure supply combined with functional interdependence, dependence
on free goods and the perceived existence of ‘total leisure experiences’ have
been assumed to necessitate local networks among leisure firms (Augustyn
and Knowles, 2000: 341), such networks do not necessarily form automat-
ically. Though the heavy reliance on free goods requires cooperation, free-
riding may dominate as repeat business is limited, and as attractions draw
in visitors irrespective of who and what may contribute to the total experi-
ence (Gordon and Goodall, 2000: 297).
More importantly, though leisure firms are located within the same
urban context, they are not, because of their differentiated character, eco-
nomically or culturally close. A hotel and an attraction are different in
terms of firm cultures, technological inputs, production practices and types
of information and knowledge possessed and needed. Consequently, busi-
nesses in different leisure sub-sectors seldom form sub-sector-crossing net-
works (Sørensen, 2007): ‘Each [sub]sector has its own engine’ (Roberts,
2004: 8). Even businesses within the same sub-sector, such as small and
large hotels, often differ significantly from each other in their managerial,
financial and human resource base (Morrison, 1998) which limits the
potential for relevant information transfer through networks and for local
network formation in the first place (Sørensen, 2007). Furthermore, leisure
firms that do have similar production practices and information needs, such
as similar hotels or attractions, within the same urban space are usually
competitors which ‘militate against cooperation’ (Law, 1992: 146). Finally,
though it has been argued that smaller firms in particular benefit from net-
working (especially locally) (Copp and Ivy, 2001; Morrison, 1998) smaller
leisure firms have often been observed to possess no or very small networks,
and to be concerned with their day-to-day tasks rather than with looking
ahead and building local networks (e.g. Bull, 1999: 160; Sørensen, 2007).
All in all, local urban leisure networks may, in spite of their innovative
potentials, be prone to developmental restrictions.
Local urban leisure networks may be either replaced or supplemented
by non-local networks. Parts of the commercial leisure sector are charac-
terized by high levels of market concentration and the increase in large
conglomerates, which are vertically and/or horizontally integrated (Bull
et al., 2003: 215). Examples cover almost the entire spectrum of leisure
sub-sectors and include chain hotels, restaurants, cinemas, cafes, amuse-
ment parks and other attractions. Thus the leisure business is increasingly
characterized by non-local networks sustaining innovation (Morrison,
1994: 26) as they effectively distribute information (Milne and Ateljevic,
2001: 383–4) and accumulate knowledge (Tremblay, 1998: 847). Non-
local networks, as contrasted to local networks, are favoured by the fact
that leisure firms distanced spatially from each other, such as chain hotels,
chain restaurants or similar attractions, can have similar information
needs, firm cultures and production practices and they are consequently
economically and culturally closer and thus more suitable network part-
ners than geographically close but economically and culturally distant
leisure businesses. From this point of view, it is in non-local proximity net-
works (cf. Sørensen, 2007) that the innovative benefits of networks are
achieved.
However, owing to a series of factors, innovation networks (local as well
as non-local) may be extraneous for leisure businesses. Service innovations
are easy to imitate (for example, Sundbo, 1998; Boden and Miles, 2000) and
this is even more the case in leisure as it is easy to observe others’ innova-
tions which cannot be patented (Hjalager, 2002: 469; Poon, 1993).
Therefore, leisure firms may limit outgoing information flows and are less
inclined to participate in networks (Sundbo et al., 2007). Furthermore, as
the production and consumption of leisure experiences cannot be sepa-
rated, innovations, to a high degree, are processed through the involvement
of the consumer and many innovations occur ad hoc as businesses are con-
fronted with particular demands. Innovation is thus also often based on
practical experience (Sundbo et al., 2007). Additionally, in smaller leisure
businesses, the absorptive capacity of external information is low (and thus
also the potentials for and benefits of information distribution in networks)
as ownership changes quickly as the skill of the labour force is low and as
labour turnover is high (Hjalager, 2002). The leisure business therefore pos-
sesses characteristics which may limit (if not eliminate) the extent and the
benefits of innovation networks.
Consequently, the geographic innovation network configuration of urban
leisure businesses is not clear. Furthermore, different network geographies
may exist in different leisure locations thanks to different configurations of

the leisure businesses (such as large/small, individual/conglomerates,
diverse/similar). Nor are geographical network configurations static; they
have their own life-cycles (Gibson et al., 2005). Additionally, local networks
are constantly influenced by general non-local developments, such as
evolving leisure and residential tastes, income growth, available forms of
transport, holiday behaviour patterns and so on (Gordon and Goodall,
2000: 292). Such different geographical network configurations may have
different consequences for the innovative trajectories of urban leisure busi-
nesses and thus for the competitive situation of urban leisure spaces. As
local networks favour the distribution of locally embedded information
(Capello, 1999: 359) and the development of new knowledge based on the
combination of such information, such networks will favour locally rooted
innovation primarily, which could potentially lead to unique and authentic
urban leisure spaces. This is particularly so when seen in contrast to non-
local/global networks. Such networks and their companies are responsible
for the standardization and homogenization of supply (Poon, 1993: 55) and
are thus the leading engines of the serial production of urban leisure expe-
riences. Relying solely on such networks may therefore be risky for the com-
petitiveness of urban leisure experiences. On the other hand, urban leisure
experiences relying solely on local networks may, as has been argued to
occur in other sectors, become trapped in narrow development trajectories,
consequently limiting development and leading eventually to entropic
death (Grabher, 1993; Asheim and Cooke, 1999). The consequences of such
different innovation network geographies are unclear but, owing to their
different information distribution capabilities, they may be assumed to
influence the direction of development and thus the competitiveness of
urban leisure spaces. Finally, other factors, potentially with other innovative
consequences, may predominate or take over when networks are lacking,
such as R&D, entrepreneurship (cf. Schumpeter, 1961) or market analysis
(Sørensen, 2007: 42). Also, it should be kept in mind that networks, when
too strong, may hinder rather than promote innovation (Holmen et al.,
2005; Håkansson and Ford, 2002).
Thus, the innovation network processes of leisure firms are not docu-
mented, nor are the innovative consequences and the resulting competitive-
ness of urban leisure business and spaces. However, the above discussion has
provided some indications about this (illustrated in Figure 7.1). In this light,
the case study presented below illustrates different geographical innovation
network configurations and indicates how such may influence the develop-
ment trajectories and competitive situation of leisure businesses and urban
leisure spaces.
Non-local networks
Innovation based on local and

Innovation towards standardization non-local knowledge sustaining
innovation and preserving
De-spatialized and spatial diversification
non-competitive urban leisure space
Competitive urban leisure space
Locally-based innovation sustaining

spatial diversification
Non-innovative and
non-competitive urban ‘Entropic Death’
leisure space
Competitive urban leisure space
in the short term
Local networks
Figure 7.1 Hypothetical consequences of geographically organized urban

leisure innovation network
4 THE SMALL-TOWN LEISURE EXPERIENCE

INNOVATION NETWORKS OF NYKØBING
FALSTER
To illustrate empirically the importance and the consequences of geograph-

ically organized innovation networks for urban leisure experience businesses
in a small-town context, a case study was carried out in Nykøbing Falster,
Denmark. Nykøbing and its suburbs are located on the islands of Lolland-
Falster in the southernmost part of Denmark in the region of Sjælland
(Figure 7.2). Nykøbing is a small town with approximately 25 000 inhabi-
tants, but is the largest and main commercial town on Lolland-Falster.
Though located only 120 kilometres from Copenhagen, to which it is infra-
structurally well connected (railway and motorway), Nykøbing and
Lolland-Falster are considered a peripheral area of Denmark.
4.1 Method
In order to analyse and illustrate the role of geographically organized inno-

vation networks of Nykøbing’s leisure experiences, a multiple case study
was carried out. In-depth qualitative, semi-structured interviews lasting
Figure 7.2 Location of Nykøbing Falster
from one to two hours were carried out with 16 key informants (see
Table 7.1). Nine (in a total of eight interviews) of these were directors, man-
agers and owners of leisure businesses (private, semi-private and public);
one was a coordinator of a local network; and six (in a total of five inter-
views) were actors from public authorities and organizations (who were
interviewed to gain a broader perspective on the leisure policies and devel-
opment of the town). Such a qualitative case study is an appropriate
approach for taking account of the multidimensionality of innovation phe-
nomena (DeBresson, 1996) and innovation networks (Halinen and
Törnroos, 2004), as their meanings, processes and outcomes are complexes
that can only be understood within their context and as a socially con-
structed phenomenon. The case study’s basic unit of analysis consists of
the focal actor networks of the studied businesses, that is, the businesses’
immediate relations (Halinen and Törnroos, 2004: 4–5). This limits the pos-
sibility of analysing the totality of the networks, but provides the opportu-
nity to deal with a higher number of businesses in the analysis (cf. Halinen
and Törnroos, 2004). However a ‘macro unit’ of analysis, consisting of
the larger networks of possibly interconnected focal actor networks in
Nykøbing, is also dealt with, as it is of analytic relevance to identify the
broader network geography of the leisure experience business. The busi-
nesses selected as cases are varied so as to sustain the comparative analysis
of diverse leisure businesses. The chosen cases therefore allowed for a first
Table 7.1 Interviews referred to in the case study analysis
Networks
I1 Artitide
Businesses
I2 Kulturfabrikken (Culture Factory)* (Youth activity house and concertplace)
I3 Studenterhuset* (Student house)
I4 Nykøbing Falster Teater* (Theatre)
I5 Medieval Centre (Experimental centre/attraction)
I6 Falsters Minder (Historical museum)
I7 Scala Bio (Cinema)
I8 Centralbiblioteket (Library)
I9 Nykøbing Falster Zoologiske Have (Zoo)
Public authorities/organizations
I10 Mayor (Municipality of Guldborgsund)
I11 Department of Business and (Municipality of Guldborgsund)
Employment
I12 Department of Children, (Municipality of Guldborgsund)
Education and Culture
I13 Østdansk Turisme (East Danish (Regional Tourist Organisation)
Tourism)
I14 Nykøbing Falster Touristboard
Note: Reference keys: I1–I14; italic: emphasized exemplary cases; asterisks: members of
the Artitide network.
explorative categorization by means of a cross-case synthesis (cf.Yin, 2003).

The following analysis focuses mainly on five cases that illustrate network
configurations with significant innovative outcomes.
4.2 The Nature and Geography of the Leisure Experience of Nykøbing

Falster
In Nykøbing, as in other towns in the Sjælland region, there is an increas-

ing focus on attracting inhabitants. The main supplier is Copenhagen (I10,
I11, I14). Though the leisure offered by Nykøbing is recognized politically
to play a role in attracting these new inhabitants, the housing prices, con-
siderably lower in Nykøbing than in Copenhagen and its adjacent areas, are
considered the number one attractor (I10, I14). Difficulties in attracting
new inhabitants are considered to be due to the limitations of the local
job market (I10, I12, I14). Therefore, attracting new businesses to the
municipality is considered fundamental for also attracting new inhabitants

to the town. The well developed infrastructure (including 30-minute ferry
services from Lolland and Falster to Germany) is considered the main
attractor of such new businesses (I10, I14). Thus leisure is considered rele-
vant but plays a secondary role as an attractor of population and businesses
in Nykøbing. This may be due to the fact that there is not an explicit focus
on attracting the so-called ‘creative class’. Instead, the focus is on attract-
ing newly established families and individuals with short and medium-term
educational backgrounds, as they fit the needs of existing local firms (I11)
As a typical town in this respect, Nykøbing does not possess attractions
drawing tourists to the town in its own right. Instead, the nearby seaside
resorts (in particular Marielyst, located on the Baltic Sea coast 10 kilome-
tres away from Nykøbing) sustain a constant flow of tourists to the town
during the summer period. Thus competition (for new inhabitants as well
as for tourists) is regional though intersected in the global networks of
cities and mobilities. However, Nykøbing is also characterized by a spatial
concentration of leisure businesses within the town and in particular in the
town centre (about 75 leisure businesses are located in the town, of which
about 40 are agglomerated within the town centre). These cover a broad
spectra of leisure businesses and include museums, theatres, cafés/restau-
rants, hotels, attractions and so on. The vast majority of these businesses
are micro businesses and they are almost entirely locally based rather than
parts of international and global conglomerates.
In spite of the locally based character of the majority of the leisure busi-
nesses, local uniqueness and authenticity is not considered a predominant
aspect of the local leisure offered either in Nykøbing or on Lolland-Falster
as a whole. Attractions do not ‘fit’ with the natural and historical condi-
tions of the area (I6) and, whereas individual businesses develop new
attractions, the coherence of the development is vague (I6) and the inno-
vations do not draw the sector towards uniqueness or local, authentic
products (I13). As a result: ‘There is no obvious brand in this end of the
country’ (I5). The positive point of view on this development is that ‘There
is nothing you can’t get here that you can get in other places’ (I9).
Furthermore, the townscape of Nykøbing is influenced by non-local design
trends and Nykøbing is in this respect categorized as the most ‘disfigured’
town on Lolland-Falster: ‘Nykøbing suffers from misplaced new buildings
on the most vulnerable places’ (Æstetisk Råd (Aesthetic Council) 2007,
own translation). Furthermore, the town centre is dominated by chain
stores and supermarkets, which are the same as you find in other Danish
towns of the same size, leaving little notable difference from other towns.
Finally, though Nykøbing and its suburbs are situated on both shores of
the sound of Guldborg, a functional distance to the sound, from which the
city centre is isolated by parking lots and supermarkets, is evident. In this

respect Nykøbing is not much different from most other Danish towns sit-
uated by the water (Æstetisk Råd, 2007). Though Nykøbing possesses a
large number of leisure experience businesses compared to its number of
inhabitants, and in this way is exemplary (I11), the leisure experience of the
town offers little that is unique and authentic and is to a large degree the
same experience you could have anywhere, including its physical, func-
tional and sociocultural landscape. Nykøbing can be considered a ‘clone
town’ and a result of the serial production of Danish towns. Thus
differentiation from other towns is not evident.
4.3 Network Geographies of the Leisure Space of Nykøbing Falster
The lack of differentiation can be partly related to the fact that, at the
overall level, local networks are limited. However, such local networks are,
from the perspective of the regional tourism sector organization, indis-
pensable because the local businesses are often too small to innovate on
their own (I13). The lack of networks is particularly evident as regards sub-
sector crossing networks. For example, cultural businesses and more tradi-
tional leisure businesses have little – if any – cooperation, and tourist and
cultural businesses have also had difficulties in cooperating (I8). From the
tourism sectors’ point of view, cooperative problems arise as non-tourism
firms benefiting from tourism do not cooperate with the tourism sector,
for example, by participating in promoting the town (I13). Thus the
problem of free-riding is apparent. As a result, the convergence of leisure
and tourism is not evidently expressed in the networks and has not yet led
to more local networks. This may partly be due to the convergence not
having expressed itself to the benefit of the businesses. Thus the businesses’
customers remain either tourists or local residents, except for two of the
cases examined here, in which customers are both locals and tourists.
However, within the local landscape of leisure businesses, a number of
businesses with more or less developed local networks can be identified.
These local networks are to different degrees supplemented by non-local
networks. These different network geographies and outcomes will now be
examined.
4.4 Sub-sector Crossing Networks
The most evident leisure experience network with the most significant out-
comes in Nykøbing is composed of a number of businesses from different
leisure sectors. This network – Artitide (Art in Time) – includes a small
number (10) of businesses and thus only involves a small fraction of the
leisure businesses of Nykøbing (I1). It may be considered a sub-sector

crossing network though its members still remain mainly (though not only)
within and around the cultural spheres of leisure. The Artitide network was
originally a result of a political initiative to employ a cultural consultant
with, among others, the specific purpose of creating such sub-sector cross-
ing networks (I1). Cooperation within the network is both formal and
informal and brings different types of benefits. One benefit arises from a
sort of ‘co-opetition’ where network members treat each other, not as com-
petitors, but as mutually dependent. This involves not competing to attract
visitors by, for example, arranging simultaneous events (I3): ‘of course
we are aggressive and we have to earn money but we have the overall
outlook . . . for the town it doesn’t matter if the event takes place in the
theatre or in the sports centre, the money will come in, the people will be in
town . . . It doesn’t matter if it is here or there as long as it is to the benefit
of all of us’ (I4). Another benefit arising from the network is more func-
tional as the network members offer each other assistance when needed,
lend each other equipment, and so on (I1, I2, I3, I4). Another benefit con-
sists in the distribution of knowledge and inspiration which may induce
innovations within the participating firms (I3). The most important and
evident outcome of this knowledge and information sharing, and of the
network as such, is developmental cooperation in innovating.
This mainly concerns the development of events. A number of smaller
events and other offers have been created, such as a mobile nightclub (I2)
and an art nightclub in the swimming centre (I2). Nevertheless, the main
manifestations are the returning events, ‘Culture-Night’ and ‘Culture-
Clash’ (I1). In particular, the week-long Culture-Clash festival is an illus-
tration of possible outcomes of the sub-sector crossing network. As the
name implies, the network creates an event in which different cultural busi-
nesses ‘clash’ their knowledge and products with other local cultural busi-
nesses. This clash of the local is also clashed with the non-local. This is
based on the view that external knowledge challenges local cultural busi-
nesses, preventing them from being trapped in a self-centred ‘bubble’ (I1).
This clashing of cultural expressions of knowledge results in something
local and unique, while it also has the potential of ‘moving’ the local
culture: ‘We have a festival that is different from what you see in any other
place in the country because you can experience a combination of a local
peculiarity – sub-cultures from the local area – and some very different cul-
tural expressions that come from the outside, within the framework of the
same festival. Then I actually believe, and it is my experience that . . . it has
another dissemination than yet another art museum, because who doesn’t
have an art museum, who doesn’t have a culture house?’ (I1). The network,
and its members, consider themselves innovative precisely because of the
combination arising from crossing sectoral borders (I2): ‘When different

perspectives cross each other and change each other’s usual ways of seeing
things, that’s where I see that new things are created’ (I1). This willingness
to cross sectoral borders is a distinct characteristic of Artitide’s businesses,
as it calls for an openness not common among leisure businesses (I1): ‘it is
difficult to move people away from the usual’ (I2).
Some of the businesses participating in the Artitide network have addi-
tional and important non-local network relations. In the case of the youth
activity and concert place Kulturfabrikken (Culture Factory) non-local
cooperation, for example with other concert places, exists (I2). These non-
local relations bring additional knowledge which promotes learning and
assists in the creation of different events. Within these relations there is
open information distribution; businesses derive and give away ideas from
and to other places; and they find themselves having common problems
and a common cultural mission: ‘They are good playmates to make
arrangements with’ (I2). These network relations are more centred on busi-
nesses within the same sub-sectors and are as such not sub-sector crossing.
Other businesses within Artitide lack such additional networks and there-
fore also lack the information benefits, leaving them with the innovative
benefits of Artitide only (I2).
In the case of Artitide, this local network sustains innovation as it inte-
grates know-how and links fragmented capabilities of the participating
small firms. Thus it helps overcome the disadvantages associated with small
size. This sub-sector crossing character of the network causes new innova-
tive expressions of the local. Individual businesses furthermore find addi-
tional innovative benefits in non-local networks in which economic and
cultural proximities among the businesses are clearer and through which
additional external knowledge is retrieved. However, the results of the
Artitide network are mainly expressed in individual events and not in more
constantly accessible experiences. While it may provide important benefits
for the individual businesses, and may also create derived and more long-
lasting innovative benefits for these and for the town as such, this focus on
events as well as the limited size of the network results in the network itself
not ‘moving the town’, and its overall leisure experience significantly
towards a differentiated innovative offer of leisure experiences.
4.5 Other Networking Businesses
Other businesses possess both local and non-local network relations which
are beneficial regarding innovative activities. However, these cannot be con-
sidered sub-sector crossing networks. The Medieval Centre is one such
business and perhaps the most significant, both as an innovative leisure
experience provider in Nykøbing, but also regarding the configuration of

its networks. The attraction of the Medieval Centre is a medieval village,
populated by volunteers during the open season. In addition to going about
their daily medieval life, the volunteers and the employees create daily
events, including popular jousting tournaments and shooting with tre-
buchets. While there are other attractions in Denmark and abroad that
offer similar styles of experiences, the centre sees itself as unique because it
offers interactive entertainment to achieve a ‘total experience’. It can, fur-
thermore, be considered authentic and unique because of a clear local focus
(I5). This authenticity was originally rooted in the origin of the attraction
which was the 750th anniversary of Nykøbing and in the original purpose
of making an attraction which presented an experience of the times of the
origin of the town: ‘The sources for restoration should be as local as pos-
sible . . . In the fiction we try to construct, Sundkøbing [the name of the
constructed medieval village] is a village placed on the sound of Guldborg’
(I5). To achieve this authentic fiction, network relations with local
museums, historical archives and the like exist (I5). These are located not
only in Nykøbing but all over Lolland-Falster, and some of these relations
may therefore be considered semi-local. Though the Medieval Centre con-
tinues to gain information and knowledge benefits from these relations,
inducing innovations in the centre, today the centre has built up a pool of
expertise and knowledge so that the information stream primarily goes the
other way. Though the Medieval Centre sees itself as very dependent on the
local tourism system (as their visitors are mostly tourists) other tourism
firms are not considered relevant regarding innovations as the centre sees
itself as being too different from other tourism as well as other leisure firms.
Therefore, sub-sector crossing network relations are limited to an out-
sourcing arrangement of the centre’s restaurant with the hotel next door
and to promotional cooperation. This is ‘as much cooperation as you can
have’ (I5) and it does not result in learning and information distribution of
importance for innovative activities because ‘there are no other businesses
locally that are like the medieval centre’ (I5). The local networks of the
Medieval Centre are combined with more specific cooperation with other
historical attractions in Denmark and Europe through which additional
external knowledge and ideas arise (I5).
The Falster Minder Museum is connected to very similar networks to
those of the Medieval Centre. At the same time, though the experience
offered is a more passive and ‘typical’ museum experience, it is one which, in
ways similar to the Medieval Centre, offers an authentic experience thanks
to its natural focus on local history. However, the style of presentation (con-
trary to the Medieval Centre) is in broad terms identical to what is typical of
most traditional museums, where the focus has traditionally been on passing
on knowledge rather than to entertain. However, in the same way as the

Medieval Centre, the museum’s local foundation is achieved through (semi-
)local networking with other museums, historical archives, and the like.
These networks involve, not only the transfer of information and knowledge,
but are also focused on the creation of exhibitions through the pooling of
local resources (knowledge as well as artefacts): ‘It is in the local area that
the greatest possibilities for development of local authentic products exist’
(I6). Again, as with the Medieval Centre, non-local relations exist with other
museums favouring knowledge and information transfer and the develop-
ment of experiences such as historical motorcycle tours. Sub-sector crossing
networks are limited to promotional activities and do not support informa-
tion transfer favouring innovations: ‘We are different from other tourist
minded businesses. We feel best about exchanging things within the museum
sector, because we talk the same language, and we have the same tools . . . So
it is not because we don’t want to [cooperate with other types of businesses]
but it seems more natural’ (I6).
Consequently, these networks are examples of how local networks inte-
grate local knowledge and sustain innovation leading to the development
of locally authentic leisure experiences. However, sub-sector crossing net-
works are not, in innovative terms, important for these businesses as a result
of the economic and cultural diversity of the different leisure business sub-
sectors. The local networks are complemented by non-local networks char-
acterized by economic and cultural proximities in these which bring
additional non-local knowledge to businesses sustaining innovation.
A final type of networking company relies mainly or solely on non-local
networks which, furthermore, are limited to a specific sector. Nykøbing
cinema is one such company that does not rely on local relations with other
leisure businesses for innovating the experience offered. Instead it relies
purely on non-local innovation networks which consist of relations with
other cinemas nationally as well as other relations which remain within the
‘cinema experience sector’. The reason for this geographical network struc-
ture is related to the type of international, even global, film and techno-
logical production system that it is part of, which is economically and
culturally seen as distinct from any other leisure sector: ‘the cinemas are
very much themselves in the experience – slash – leisure front’ (I7). This also
means that the lack of other similar companies, that is, the lack of other
companies within the cinema experience business, in Nykøbing eliminates
the potential for innovation networking in the local area. Thus, in this case,
the diversity, the economic and cultural distance, of the urban leisure expe-
rience business limits any type of local innovation networking. The result
of this network configuration is a high degree of dependence on non-local
knowledge about innovating. The result is that the experience offered
possesses few local, unique or authentic characteristics. This is to a certain

degree also a result of the type of experience offered (films experiences) and
the core product (the films) cannot be innovated further: ‘We have a hand-
icap . . . because we have a product that we cannot change . . . We are not
allowed to touch the product’. Innovations consist mainly of setting up
different events in relation to different films, improving service, and of mar-
keting innovations. In spite of its qualities and its reputation as a leading
cinema not only in the local area but also regionally, it can be characterized
as a non-place which lacks local, unique and authentic aspects. Thus, this
type of company is one where non-local innovation networks and the lack
of local innovation networks results in a non-place experience.
5 CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS
This chapter has given new insights about the outcomes of innovation net-
works of urban leisure experience businesses. In particular, it has illumi-
nated how different geographical configurations of such networks have a
clear effect on the innovative trajectories of urban leisure experience busi-
nesses and spaces. It was hypothesized that local networks may lead to
unique and authentic offers, and thus also a competitive urban leisure expe-
rience space. However, among other things, the diversity of the businesses
producing the urban leisure experience may impose restrictions on the
development of such local networks. At the same time, without being
connected to non-local networks, the long-term competitive situation of
urban leisure spaces may be endangered. On the other hand, an overre-
liance on non-local networks may cause the development of serially pro-
duced, inauthentic and standardized urban leisure experiences and, thus, a
non-competitive urban leisure space.
The case study of the Danish town of Nykøbing Falster has illustrated the
theoretical points made. Local networking is not predominant in Nykøbing,
which causes a lack of coherence and of a local authentic and unique urban
leisure experience space. Nevertheless, certain businesses operate in local net-
works. These sustain the development of local authentic leisure experiences.
However, only in the case of Artitide does a network crossing economic and
cultural distances between different leisure sub-sectors exist which has been
seen to sustain the creation of unique innovative leisure experiences. In other
cases, the economic and cultural diversity of different leisure experience sub-
sectors inhibit the development of such sub-sector crossing networks, but
still some firms create locally authentic leisure experiences with the help of
local networks. Non-local networks bring the businesses additional infor-
mation and sustain further innovativeness, and avoid the inertia which may
result from an overdependence on local networks. As such, these businesses

obtain the benefits of both local and non-local networks. However, the
overall limited nature of local networks as well as the serially produced char-
acter of the town, results in the lack of an overall coherent, distinctive and
competitive urban leisure experience space. Therefore the case study indi-
cates that a greater focus on local networking, and in particular perhaps on
such networks that include companies from different leisure experience sub-
sectors, can be beneficial for the future development of the leisure experience
offer of this and of other similar towns. Nevertheless, the development of
local sub-sector crossing networks is complicated by the nature of the leisure
experience business and the large economic and cultural distances that exist
between its different sub-sectors.
A number of other factors and processes influence the innovative behav-
iour of the leisure businesses. These are, for example, the vision or strategy
of the businesses determining the style of the experiences produced along
a number of dimensions; the entrepreneurial characteristics of the compa-
nies’ owners, managers and employees; the importance of the visitors for
innovative activities or ‘user-driven innovation’; learning by doing; and
R&D. The last (R&D) was central for the activities of the Medieval Centre
(I5) and the Falster Minder Museum (I6) as well as the Zoo (I9). Thus, in
these cases, the businesses are not as is typically assumed for leisure busi-
nesses distanced from innovation occurring through R&D. This also
implies that these companies have a number of employees who are highly
educated and that the companies possess a high absorptive capacity of
knowledge which is also in contrast to what is generally assumed for leisure
businesses. All of these factors and processes, their existence and outcomes,
are closely interrelated with each other as well as with the existence and the
outcomes of networks. Thus much innovation and large parts of the inno-
vation processes depend on factors and occur outside networks inside the
businesses. All in all, this chapter has produced new insights about the inno-
vative trajectories of urban leisure experience businesses and spaces, but, as
indicated above, these insights provide only a first fraction of information
for understanding the innovative behaviour of these leisure businesses and
spaces.
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8. Experience offerings: who or what
does the action?
Connie Svabo
1 EMPLOYEE/ENVIRONMENT INTERACTION IN
THE SERVICE EXPERIENCE OFFERING
The aim of this chapter is to create an understanding of the interplay

between employees and material artefacts in experience offerings in the
retail service industry. The chapter suggests a strategic consciousness
towards the interplay between physical infrastructure and social processes.
A source of innovation may be found in the notion of action: who or what
does the action when experiences are offered? Who or what provides the
service?
In this chapter two important contributors to experience production,
employees and the physical environment, are considered. They are seen as
being linked in an action network of interdependent causalities. This under-
standing makes it possible to rethink the services provided, and thus the
experiences which are attempted to be created. A central point made here is
that the strategic design of leisure experiences within retail services can
benefit from an approach that explores the actor network theory (ANT)
notion of relatedness and the argument that objects too have agency. ANT
is preoccupied with tracing connections between human and non-human
entities and with understanding how stable relations are performed. An
important point of inquiry concerns who and what act when ‘we’ act in
organizational and social contexts (Latour, 2005, p. 45). ANT stresses that
non-human entities are important participants in social and organizational
action, and thus have to be taken into account in tales of organizing.
2 INTELLIGENT SPACES AND EXCLUDED

EMPLOYEES
The traditional view of ‘separateness’ in which employees are thought of as

being one ‘variable’ of production, and the physical, material world is seen
157
as another ‘variable’, is here complemented by an understanding in which

employees and non-human objects are ‘thought together’ in a relational
network. They are seen as heterogeneous entities which in their interplay
may create the right circumstances for good customer experiences.
This understanding is illustrated with examples. The first example is from
a nightclub in Ibiza, where the ordering service is carried out by a translu-
cent cup on a table. The second example is from the Italian haute couturier
firm Prada’s New York City epicentre, where intelligently designed envir-
onments enable the employee to concentrate fully on the customer. Both
examples are designs produced by the strategic design firm IDEO. The
examples serve three purposes in this text.
First, they illustrate how an empirical practice may be interpreted as
a relational network of heterogeneous entities. A relational–materialist
(ANT) understanding shows the connections between human and non-
human entities and how these cooperate in the leisure experience offering.
The relational–materialist view affords the possibility of perceiving and
further understanding various types of interaction between humans and
non-humans. It demonstrates that interaction in the retail service organi-
zation is not adequately understood in categories which separate the phys-
ical environment and the employees, because this leads to an optic
blindness to the relations and interactions between these parties in creating
leisure experience offerings.
Second, the examples demonstrate two kinds of (design of) relations
between employees and the environment. A spectrum of possibilities for
interaction can be seen, ranging from employee inclusion to employee
exclusion. In one of the examples the physical layout is designed to make
the customer as autonomous and self-serving as possible, in the other it
augments employee–customer interaction.
Third, the examples are used as a point of departure for thinking about
the management of employee/environment interaction. Conventionally,
organizational development and competence development is directed
towards human beings. According to a relational–materialist understand-
ing this should be revised. The relations and interactions between humans
and the physical environment should be the core focus of management.
3 LEISURE EXPERIENCE OFFERING
This chapter focuses on leisure experience offerings taking examples from

retail services. Leisure is understood in the classical sense as spare time,
time free from work. A leisure experience implies a qualitative dimension;
it is something which the customer might seek in the expectation of
Experience offerings 159
deriving comfort, of spending time pleasantly without haste or hurry,

and in an enjoyable manner. So leisure experience offering is choreo-
graphing a business reality that seeks to maximize the potential leisure
experience for the customer, while at the same time looking after business
interests.
This chapter does not provide an in-depth discussion of experience as a
psychological phenomenon. For this reason, the term experience offering is
used. There is a big difference between staging something which may
develop into a memorable, enjoyable customer experience, and the actual
experience. The staging is what this chapter terms the experience offering,
and it is this empirical phenomenon which is examined. To understand the
actual experience would be quite a different subject matter, which most
probably would call for another approach.
4 EMPLOYEES AND THE NON-HUMAN STUFF
In developing a relational–materialist understanding of the design of

leisure experience offerings, the focus is on two important vehicles for
experience production: the employees and the physical setting and its com-
ponents. Broadly speaking, the focus concerns how the materiality of the
organization (physical surroundings, building, layout, artifacts, design and
so on), interplays with the organizational, social processes in the places of
leisure. More specifically, the focus is on activity: who or what acts, and who
or what creates the leisure experiences?
Posing the question, who or what acts, makes it necessary to dwell a little,
to clarify: we all know what an employee is, but the other variable at hand
is rather more difficult to pinpoint. Already, I have called this other by
several names; material artefacts and objects, a physical setting with some
components, an organizational materiality, and it is all of these things and
more. When examining material reality in this chapter, no a priori distinc-
tions, categories and terms are made. Material reality may be a landscape,
it may be a design object, a piece of architecture or something entirely
different. As long as it is more or less tangible, and leaves some kind of trace
of its existence, this definition of the material dimension encompasses it all;
the whole range of hard (and soft) stuff that participates in the attempt to
create a customer experience.
This may seem rather broad: a somewhat imprecise definition of some-
thing which we are trying to get to know better. There is a good reason for
this lack of precision. The reason lies in the theoretical point of departure
that this chapter takes.
5 THE ANT CLAIM THAT THINGS HAVE AGENCY
When looking at the interaction between human actors and the material
world, there is one sociological perspective which is renowned for its unique
conceptualization of ‘things’ (Fuglsang, 2005; Strati, 2006). This perspec-
tive is the one which uneasily exists under the name of actor network theory
(ANT), and the interesting part of it (there may be several points, which are
interesting, but the interesting thing in this context) is the following: ANT
claims that things, objects and other non-human material entities actually
act. ANT states that objects too participate in creating action, that they too
have agency. Simply stated, ANT claims that a focus on empirical actants
and the relations between them gives the most credible understandings of
social action.
When we attempt to understand social action, it is a central point of the
ANT approach that we should try to leave some of our a priori ‘categories’
at home. More or less everything is rendered an empirical question. And
that, of course, is the reason why I am asking you to tolerate the mess of
not separating architecture from design from landscape from artefact:
because, maybe, the analytical act of dividing the material into these dis-
tinct categories hinders us from seeing similarities among and between
them, for instance in their capacity for action.
6 THE ARTIFACT: FROM TOOL TO ACTOR
Within organization studies, there is an increasing interest in the tangible,

physical, material realities of organizational processes: ‘In short, at the
beginning of this new millennium, organizational artifacts depict contem-
porary Western societies as some sort of ‘postsocial environment’ (Knorr
Cetina, 2003) in which they mediate the social relations among people to
an ever-increasing extent, and in which they themselves transmogrify into
transmutational objects’, writes Strati (2006, p. 24). As indicated in the
quotation, a common way to talk about the material, physical dimension
of organizational life is to talk of artifacts, and this term is also used by
some of the authors working within the ANT tradition (Suchman, 2003;
Nicolini et al., 2003), but more common is the use of the terms object,
actant or entity.
When Strati (Table 8.1) accounts for this development towards material-
ity, embodiment and tacitness in organization studies, he ascribes initial
contributions to this development to the intellectual tradition which this
chapter focuses on: actor network theory: ‘Toward the end of the last
century, the pathos of organizational artifacts highlighted by study of
Table 8.1 Similarities among lines of inquiry which conceptualize artifacts

not only as tools, but as actors
Line of inquiry Emphasis is given to Looked into by doing

qualitative analysis of
Aesthetic approach the role of the organizational organizational phenomena
Actor network theory artifact in the everyday life the constant
Workplace studies of organizations changeableness of
Cooperative learning symbolic interaction organizational artefacts
Participatory design the social and collective the time span in which
construction of reality they arise and spread
sociotechnical detail
the micro dimension
Source: My overview of points made by Strati (2006) in Pratt and Rafaeli (2006).
aesthetics and organizations was flanked by Michel Callon’s (1980) sociol-

ogy of translation – thereafter termed “actor network theory” ’ (Law and
Hassard, 1999) – and in particular by Bruno Latour’s study (1992), which
treated artifacts as ‘missing masses’ from sociotechnical analyses of organ-
izational phenomena. The status of the artifact has also been changed from
that of a tool to an actor in organizational dynamics by the analyses con-
ducted within ‘workplace studies’ (Heath and Button, 2002), as well as
those on ‘cooperative learning’ and ‘participatory design’ applied to infor-
mation systems (Ciborra, 1996; Ehn, 1988).
Apparently, several lines of inquiry think of and understand artifacts
(which may be more or less durable and stable) as actors in organizational
dynamics, instead of as mere tools (Table 8.2): ‘Organizational artifacts,
even when they are physical and tangible objects, are not static, immutable,
and determinable once and for all; on the contrary, constructionist, phe-
nomenological, and interactionist analyses have shown the extent to which
they are mutable and constantly self-innovative’ (Strati, 2006, p. 23, in Pratt
& Rafaeli, 2006).
7 DIFFERENCE: WHAT IS ASCRIBED ‘A CAPACITY

FOR ACTION’
Nevertheless, according to Strati, the extent to which non-human objects are

attributed a capacity for action is a prime difference between actor network
theory and parallel lines of inquiry, such as the aesthetic approach, work-
place studies, cooperative learning and participatory design (Strati, 2006).
‘These approaches differ in the extent to which they attribute to non-

human objects a capacity for action on a par with that of humans – actor
network theory in fact theorizes the capacity for action of the organiza-
tional artifact and the scaling back of exclusively human action’ (Strati,
2006, p. 24, in Pratt and Rafaeli, 2006).
Strati’s evaluation that actor network theory is unique in its way of con-
ceptualizing the capacity of action of non-human entities is a good
justification for drawing on ANT in an attempt to create a new under-
standing of how leisure experiences are created. It is exactly this inquiry
which this text is interested in pursuing: it is interested in playing with the
idea of viewing non-human entities as participants in the action of offering
leisure experiences.
How is it, then, that ANT ascribes non-human elements a capacity for
action? This will be clarified through the theoretical interpretation of the
following examples which, each in their own way, show how objects may be
central actors in the creation of leisure experiences and how leisure services
are acted out in relational networks.
In the first example, a constellation of objects takes over the act of provid-
ing a service, which previously was the job of a human. In the second example,
technology is used to augment the service encounter in shopping experiences.
8 AN ORDERING CUP AND INTERACTIVE TABLES

AT A NIGHTCLUB IN IBIZA
At a nightclub in Ibiza, a series of round tables have taken over a function

which normally is carried out either by a waiter coming to a table or by the
customer going to the bar. The function is that of ordering: placing an order
for a drink.
At the centre of the round tables at which VIP customers are seated rests
a translucent cup (Box 8.1). When not in use, it sits upside-down at the
centre of the table, with pulsating LEDs reflecting on the pure white
surface. There, on the table, it is a quite neutral object. The action starts
when the customer wants to place an order.
An overview of drinks on sale is provided by a traditional card. To order
a drink, the guest picks up the cup and dials a disc displaying numbers from
0 to 99. Each number refers to a drink. When the cup displays the desired
drink, be it Bourbon or Screwdriver, the drink is ordered by pressing a ‘buy’
button in the centre of the table. The order is wirelessly transmitted to a
computer behind the bar, where a display shows each of the tables. The bar
staff then notes the orders, delivers the drinks and confirms, on the com-
puter, when this has happened.
Box 8.1 Interactive table and cup
The networked table allows customers to order drinks from where

they sit. The interactive ordering table presents an opportunity to
consider how to deliver an extension of a service
Source: IDEO web
The Manumission ordering service is carried out by the cup and the table.
A conventional analysis of this case might stress that the activity is carried
out by the customer and the bar-staff. And this is true. Equally evident is
that the activity of ordering is certainly affected by the participation of the
cup. The cup does something. It makes a difference. Looking at how the
activity of ordering takes place, it seems interesting to explore the role of
the cup and table as ‘objects with agency’. The cup and table and the
network that they are connected to actually seem to perform a task, con-
jointly, of course, with other actors.
9 OBJECTS TOO HAVE AGENCY
In social science, the most common understanding of action is that it is

something which intentional and meaningful human beings do. Latour ques-
tions this a priori limit to who or what carries out actions. Latour argues that,
when action is limited a priori, it is quite difficult to see the actions of
objects – for instance the action of the table and cup – and in more day-to-
day situations: the action of the hammer that hits the nail (Latour, 2005).
Latour argues that the relevant question to ask about any ‘agent’ is the
following: ‘Does it make a difference in the course of some other agent’s
action or not?’ And the simple answer to that simple question is, ‘yes it does’.
The table and the cup do make a difference in the course of ordering a drink.
Table 8.2 Understanding the relationship between things and action
Social determinism ANT Technical determinism

Architectural determinism
Things are inactive and Things are participants Things determine human
passive background for in the course of action action
human action Things may
– authorize
– allow
– afford
– encourage
– permit
– suggest
– influence
– block
– render possible
– forbid
– etc.
Source: My overview of points made by Latour (2005).
Latour further argues, ‘Anything that does modify a state of affairs by

making a difference is an actor (2005). So, following Latour, the table and
the cup are actors; they are active participants in the course of action. And
thus, they have a role which could, and should, be explored further. Latour
argues that it must be quite fundamental in a social science to clarify the
question of who and what participates in the action that we are trying to
understand. This is an issue which must be thoroughly explored, ‘even
though it might mean letting elements in which, for lack of a better term,
we would call non-humans’ (Latour, 2005).
It is important to stress that Latour does not just reverse the causality at
stake. The argument is not dichotomous, saying that, if things are not just
the inactive and passive background for human action, then they must
surely be the sole determinants of all human action (Latour, 2005).
The implications of the Latourian argument are more subtle, or more
complex, if you will. The point being that there is a need for thorough
analyses of the different manners in which activity takes place in relational
and material networks with the inclusion of all participants – human and
non-human actants.
ANT (Table 8.2) stresses that things participate in the course of action.
They make a difference to action, they affect the course of action, and thus
their role should be explored.
In this reading, the action of ordering a drink is carried out in and by a

net of related entities. The action net consists of several actors: the table,
the cup, the wire in between them, the customer turning the dialling device,
the wireless technology doing the transmission, the staff at the bar, etc.
This example represents an interplay between the environment and the
employee, where the traditional employee service is actually being provided
by physical actants. The table with its wireless internet technology provides
the ordering service that previously would have been carried out by a
human. The traditional employee service is being redefined, the service is
carried out in a realigned network between employees in the bar, an order-
ing device set on the table, wireless technology transmitting and receiving
the order, and the organized processing of this order.
Using John Law’s words, the cup, the table, the wireless technology, the
employees in the bar and, last but not least, the customer, are ‘a variety of
heterogeneous materials, which are deployed in support of action’, in this
case the action of ordering (Law, 2004).
Describing this pictorially, in the manner that a camera might do, actor
network theory zooms in and initially focuses on the hand holding the cup,
the relation between the human and ‘the ordering device’. This is the initial
picture, the zooming in on the action in focus. From there, the camera might
pan out, in slow motion, and show a network of relations which become
activated, the pulsation of information bits through space, rather like the
recordings of cars on a highway carried out at night, where the picture
shows trails of light, white, red and yellow, and what appears is connected-
ness, a series of nets and traces. What becomes visible with the ANT optic
is a relational net between distinct elements, human and non-human
(Nicolini et al., 2003).
10 DRESSING ROOMS WITH STASHED

INFORMATION
Italian haute couturier Prada opened a high-fashion store in New York

City in 2001. This store is another illustrative example of how the action of
providing a service may be interpreted as something which takes places in
a network (work-net) between heterogeneous entities.
The groundbreaking store holds an in-store sales experience which is
closely choreographed using information technology, interactive dressing
rooms and a series of devices that allow the staff to focus completely on the
customers. Where the innovation in the ordering process at Manumission in
Ibiza resulted in less customer–employee interaction, the IDEO design in
the Prada store is conceived with the opposite intention. The information
architecture in the store is designed to augment the interaction between

the customer and the employee. The technology is designed to support,
rather than alter, existing ways of working. The overall aim is to provide cus-
tomers with better service while building on conventional interactions and
relationships.
Several devices carry out an array of actions in this work-net. The wire-
less Staff Device (Box 8.2) is a piece of hand-size technology, which pro-
vides information to the sales assistant. It is used to scan merchandise for
inventory information, and when used in conjunction with a display it func-
tions as a remote control, allowing the sales assistant to highlight sketches
and catwalk video clips directly in front of the customer.
Staff devices are distributed around the store. An employee picks up a
device when needed and logs on to the database by scanning his/her own
small personal radio frequency clip. The device enables sales employees to
devote all of their attention to customers and frees them from trips to the
back room or to the computer. The device scans employee tags and cus-
tomer cards, allows inventory checks, reserves dressing rooms and acts as a
remote control which may be used to access information on the store’s many
screens. It has a laser pointer, and allows stock to be ordered and delivered.
The dressing room is a simple two-and-a-quarter square metre glass
booth. One wall forms the door, which the customer can make opaque for
privacy during changing or clear to show off a garment to someone outside
the booth. Another wall incorporates a ‘magic mirror’, a camera and a
display that adds a four-second delay to the mirrored image, so the cus-
tomer can spin around and view all sides of the garment.
Different lighting conditions allow the customer to view themselves
wearing the garment in a warm evening glow or a cool blue daylight. The
opposite wall in the dressing room has two interactive closets, one for
hanging clothes and one with shelves. Sensors in the closets detect elec-
tronic tags on store items and trigger a touch screen that displays the item
and its related information, from availability to variations in colour, fabric
and size. Once registered, the information is automatically displayed on an
interactive touch screen, enabling the customer to select alternative sizes,
colours, fabrics and styles, or see the garment worn on the PRADA catwalk
as slow-motion video clips.
11 DESIGN OF RETAIL AND SERVICE

ENVIRONMENTS
The two IDEO design cases illustrate two different outcomes as regards the
customer–employee interaction in the service provision. The first case of
Box 8.2 The PRADA staff device
The wireless staff device provides information to the sales associate. It is

used to scan merchandise for inventory information. IDEO designed,
engineered and manufactured 75 staff devices and designed the user inter-
face in collaboration with AMO and KRAMDESIGN. IconNicholson
were responsible for software integration and implementation. All staff
devices were introduced to the New York store in May 2002.
Source: IDEO web
Radio-frequency Technology
The enabling technology for the store is radio-frequency ID tagging

(RFID).
All merchandise has its own RFID tag. When scanned and detected,
immediate access is provided to a database where there is a rich stream
of content for every garment, shoe and bag. This is in the form of
sketches, catwalk video clips and color swatches.
There is also up-to-date information on every item, such as what
sizes or colors are currently available. This enables the sales associ-
ate to spend more time attending personally to a customer, and less
time chasing to the stock room to check for available items.
An RFID tag is also part of a PRADA customer card. Customer
preferences are stored on the database, and only the customer card pro-
vides access. This information is used to customize the sales experience
and further enhance the service provided to the card-holding customer.
Source: IDEO web
the nightclub illustrates how technological innovation can lead to less cus-
tomer–employee interaction. This illustrates the movement of a service
from what Bitner (1992) calls ‘interpersonal services’, where both customer
and employee carry out actions within the servicescape, to a more self-
service type of action, where the action is carried out by what Bitner calls
‘the customer only’, but which we, following ANT, could also label an
action-net consisting of the customer and non-human actants. (Obviously,
there is still an interpersonal aspect to the service in Manumission, since the
drinks are brought to the tables by a human actor.)
Conventional typologies for understanding the interaction between
employee and physical environment would typically separate these two, as
exemplified by Bitner. Bitner did groundbreaking work on the interaction
between the environment and employees in retail and service firms, as pre-
sented in the article, ‘Servicescapes: The Impact of Physical Surroundings
on Customers and Employees’, which was published in the Journal of
Marketing in 1992. In the article, Bitner presents a typology for the impact
of physical surroundings on the behaviours of both customers and employ-
ees. She argues that an understanding of the impact of physical surround-
ings is especially important in service firms, because both customers and
employees generally experience the firms’ physical set-up.
Bitner’s typology categorizes service organizations on two dimensions
that portray important differences in the management of servicescapes
(Table 8.3). The two dimensions in Bitner’s typology are: first, who performs
the actions. In Bitner’s understanding, this may be the customer, the
employee or both. (Evidently, there is a considerable difference between
Bitner’s approach and the ANT approach where, as mentioned earlier on,
ANT would argue that not only humans are capable of action: material
objects, too, have agency.) The second dimension in Bitner’s typology is
concerned with the complexity of the physical environment: is it elaborate
or simple (in the table, Bitner uses the term ‘lean’, in the text she uses the
word ‘simple’. In this context ‘simple’ and ‘lean’ are thus taken to be syn-
onymous). (Bitner, 1992, p. 59)
Bitner is clearly aware of the instrumental and functional importance of
the physical environment. This is demonstrated in this quotation: ‘A clear
implication of the model presented here is that the physical setting can aid
or hinder the accomplishment of both internal organizational goals and
external marketing goals’ (Bitner, 1992, p. 58).
Nevertheless, the physical environment and the employees are separated
into distinct categories. This implies an ‘optic blindness’ towards their relat-
edness. As an alternative to this, ANT provides a relational view. This gives
the possibility of perceiving trajectories instead of boxes. It provides a
looking glass which can focus on the human–non-human interaction and
Table 8.3 Typology of service organizations based on variations in form

and usage of the servicescape
Types of service organizations Physical complexity of the Servicescape

based on who performs actions
within the Servicescape
Self-service (customer only) Golf Land ATM
Surf ‘n’ Splash Ticktron
Post office kiosk
Movie theatre
Express mail drop-off
Interpersonal services (both Hotels Dry cleaner
customer and employee) Restaurants Hot dog stand
Health clinic Hair salon
Hospital
Bank
Airline
School
Remote service (employee only) Telephone company Telephone mail order desk
Insurance company Automated voice
Utility messaging-based services
Many professional
services
Source: Bitner, 1992, p. 59.
draws figures of ‘the service organization’ which imply more fluid bound-
aries, for instance between whether a company provides ‘self-service’ or
‘interpersonal service’. Manumission is a good example of a case where a
specific part of the service provision moves from ‘interpersonal’ to ‘self-
service’, and the same service organization may have elements of both.
Furthermore, the notion of ‘self-service’ is seen in a new light, when the
network of heterogeneous entities is made visible. The customer partici-
pates among other entities, so maybe the term ‘self-service’ should be
reconsidered?
The ANT optic is useful in our attempts to understand the complexity
of service and retail environments, and thus ANT poses an interesting
challenge to the categorizations put forward by Bitner and followed by
others. The more fluid understanding which may be constructed using an
ANT-optic opens up the possibility for innovative spaces, where who or
what provides a service can be rethought. Thinking of the provision of a
service as an action which takes place in a network of heterogeneous
entities makes it possible to understand the provision of service in a whole

new way.
12 UNPREDICTABILITY: THE USER EXPERIENCE
I would like to note that the redesigns of service experience offering may be
received by the customers in many ways; the redesigns may even be disliked.
There is the risk that the customers at Manumission actually end up
missing the immersion of their bodily selves in the crowd in front of the bar,
that they end up missing the chit-chat, the flirting and the other random
social processes which may emerge in such a situation. And, in the case of
Prada, there is the risk that not all customers feel comfortable with the con-
tinuous surveillance that the Prada employee is capable of because of the
new physical infrastructure. Some customers may actually favour privacy,
and thus enjoy the breaks in the customer–employee interaction that natu-
rally occur when the employee fetches the odd garment in a different size
or colour. These breaks give the time and space to judge, independently,
how the garment looks and whether one likes it, without having to involve
or justify this making-up-ones-mind to the service providing employee.
This issue – the difference in perspective between sensegiver and sense-
maker – is pointed to by Pratt and Rafaeli (2006) and is worth further
research.
13 ENVIRONMENT AND EMPLOYEE

COMBINATIONS
Design can be used as a way of minimizing the influence that employees

have over the customer experience. Space and store lay-out can be very con-
sciously designed to make the customer as autonomous and self-serving as
possible. Obviously, this reduces the need for employees (!). Technological
innovations most probably will lead to even more employee service being
changed into self-service, where basic information-seeking activities are
carried out by technologically capable customers. The example of
Manumission in Ibiza is an example of physical objects becoming primary
‘actants’, and of the physical entity actually replacing the actions of a
human service provider. But, as the Prada example shows, rethinking the
interplay between the employee and the physical infrastructure does not
necessarily lead to making the employee superfluous. The dressing rooms
and other supporting technologies have been designed to facilitate and to
support the employee in his/her attention to the customer.
These two cases exemplify that different retail environment designs can
offer quite different future roles for the service/retail employee. Minimizing
employee influence on the customer experience may lower the required levels
of education (and thus lead to lower wages) and ultimately it may lead to
fewer jobs. This is one potential outcome of building ‘knowledge’ into the
physical artifacts. The physical infrastructure may be choreographed as a way
of ‘designing your way around’ employee participation, as in Manumission,
where the effect of employee performance on the customer experience is min-
imized by strong design of the physical environment.
A more positive scenario can be read into Prada’s New York store where
the ‘walking’ part of the service job is now carried out by physical infra-
structure, and where the future employee role could be seen as one
demanding highly specialized knowledge about psychology and sales tech-
niques for a new kind of customer–employee interaction. The physical
environment is designed to support the employee in his or her attempt to
give the customer the best possible service experience. The design/physical
infrastructure is used to augment qualitatively the customer–employee
interaction.
These two examples demonstrate the opposite extremes of a spectrum of
possibilities: one where environment design may lead to employee exclusion
and one where it may result in new forms of employee involvement.
14 EMPLOYEE AND PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT

NETWORKS
As is demonstrated above, the materiality and relatedness which the

ANT-optic foregrounds make it possible to think of the interaction
between employee and physical setting as a spectrum and it makes us see
the role of material, non-human entities in the actions of service. This
merging of employee and physical environment into a relational network
has potential consequences for the production of leisure offerings in
retail/service industry. To view the site of experience production and its
employees as an interrelated network of heterogeneous entities opens up
for alternative ways of thinking about experience production. A rela-
tional–materialist way of thinking gives a new perspective on what goes
on in practice, and holds possibilities for new ways of organizing this
practice. This has innovative potential for both customer and employee
experiences.
Summing up, the examples in this chapter suggest that a source of innov-
ation may be found in experimenting with the localization of activity in the
production of leisure experiences. This may be initiated by asking basic
questions like: Who or what creates the experience offering? Who or what
provides the service?
It seems useful to draw attention to the relational dimension of experi-
ence creation, and to do this in a manner which stresses the actions of mate-
rial objects. To encompass relatedness and heterogeneousness in the
understanding of the way experiences are offered is a valuable contribution
provided by the ANT-optic.
15 IMPLICATIONS FOR MANAGEMENT
The relational–materialist understanding sheds new light on the acts of

providing service. This has implications for the management of service
provision. Following the ANT-optic, the material dimension of organ-
izational life should not be perceived as something separate from the
people and the processes in organization. The Latourian argument that
objects too have agency and the relational–materialist understanding
questions a very common, and pretty basic, assumption that people are
the true vehicles of action, and thus also the relevant foci for goals of
change, development and competency. If we engage with the ANT
thought that humans are not the sole sources of action, we must also
engage with the thought that we have to find new ‘objects’ for manage-
ment. Focusing on humans when changes are desired fits well with the
assumption that humans are the sole source of action. This may account
for the very common focus on the human subject in practices of compe-
tence development and in change management programmes. But an ANT
understanding implies that the physical environment, artifacts and
objects should be considered in new manners if a change of action is
desired. The agency of non-human entities, their role and participation
should be considered in all attempts at controlling, organizing, ordering
and managing organizational activity, and in all attempts at changing the
way actions are carried out in everyday practice. That is, this perspective
has implications for (more or less) everything.
16 ACTANT MANAGEMENT: RETHINKING THE

CONTRIBUTION OF HUMANS/NON-HUMANS
Using the relational–materialist optic to examine modern practices may

lead to considerations that a lot of management goals and change man-
agement programmes focus too much on people issues: that they attempt
to generate change inside of employees, instead of focusing on how the
physical layout and design of work environments can help promote the
desired changes in organizational action.
The ANT optic implies that practitioners and researchers working with
change, competence and performance should reconsider the ‘object’ of
development. Instead of making the person the object of change, the object
should be something which is a bit more complex (not that people are not
complex). The object should be the more complex and more messy phe-
nomena of organizational action. Who and what creates the action and
how?
The physical, material dimension and its agency should be included in
our understanding of all organizational development processes. Where
management has strategic goals of making employees act in a different
manner, the physical environment, objects and material things should be
involved as participants and contributors. For example, if we seem to have
problems, what part of the physical layout of our firm contributes to these
problems?
Technology, artifacts and material objects can be seen as items which in
a strategic sense influence employees and thus the management of employ-
ees. Physical artifacts are important vehicles for action. They are potential
mediators of stability, and potential mediators of change. This implies
getting to know the work processes that take place in a more complex
manner and with a more ‘uneasy’ or ‘oscillating’ understanding of causal-
ities and interdependencies in action. By this I mean an understanding of
action and causality which is complex: sometimes people create action,
sometimes it is the placement of the door in a specific location that creates
a certain kind of (social) interaction.
The implication of this perspective is that ‘people’ are not sufficient as
foci in attempts at creating organizational performance. In order to chore-
ograph the action of offering experiences, several entities must be thought
together: organizational action occurs in a relational network of heteroge-
neous entities. Management would have to be oriented towards these in
their complexity and relatedness. Management would thus be about actant
management, or activity management, or management of the entities
which create action. We could replace the term human resource develop-
ment with organizational performance development. The strategic intent of
competence development (which generally and most typically focuses on
the individual) might be replaced by something we could call organiza-
tional competence development. Instead of looking inside human beings
for the sites of change and development, we would look at the heteroge-
neous relations in which these phenomena emerge. We might even play with
the thought that it was forbidden to talk about development on an indi-
vidual level.
17 DESIGNING AND MANAGING EXPERIENCE

OFFERING NETWORKS
The chapter demonstrates how providing a service can be understood in (at

least) two distinct ways: one perspective being that of Bitner’s typology where
service organizations can be categorized according to the elaborateness of
their physical environment and the character and degree of customer–
employee interaction. The other perspective is the ANT-inspired interpreta-
tion, where the provision of a service is understood as an action, which is
made possible through the cooperation of interrelated entities (human and
non-human) in a network. The ANT interpretation leads to (and emerges
from) an understanding of ‘togetherness’ which makes it possible to strate-
gize in new ways about how activities are organized and carried out.
The understanding that has been developed throughout this chapter is a
relational–material interpretation of providing service. It has been sug-
gested that the action of offering experiences may be seen as something
which is enacted in relations between heterogeneous entities. An implica-
tion of the understanding which is employed in this chapter is that
processes of knowing and doing must be understood with consideration of
and in relation to material artifacts and objects. One central implication is
that the material world, designing the hard stuff, should be a core focus for
management, when trying to improve existing and create new service expe-
riences for their customers.
The central line of argument in this chapter, and the point which is illus-
trated through case examples, is one of the basics in the cluster of thoughts
called actor network theory: that objects too have agency. This suggests
that the understanding of relational–material practices in the action net-
works between humans and the material world can be developed much
further, and that there are many more stories to tell about the action of
objects in creating and producing leisure experiences.
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Practice-based Approach, New York and London: M.E. Sharpe Armonk.
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Practice-based Approach, New York and London: M.E. Sharpe Armonk.
9. Performing cultural attractions
Jørgen Ole Bærenholdt, Michael Haldrup and
Jonas Larsen
1 INTRODUCTION
It is a central feature of experience production that it involves the perfor-

mance of the consumers or tourists that are the subjects experiencing.
Marketing literature reflects on this in terms of customizing experiences to
guide transformations of customers, themselves performing their own expe-
riences (Pine and Gilmore, 1999, ch. 9). Therefore, this chapter argues for
an engagement with the actions, performances and practices of the experi-
encing subjects that ‘make places’ in the experience economy. Instead of
emphasizing the images, representations, symbols and signs transacted at
‘experience sites’ we want to emphasize how material and metaphorical expe-
rience spaces can be seen as places of production where meaning and per-
formance are simultaneously enacted. We do this firstly by discussing the
notion of ‘performance’ as a conceptual tool for analysing experience spaces
and the embodied practices they tie into. Secondly, we engage in a discussion
of meanings and performances produced within the experience spaces of two
emblematic sites for the tourism/experience economy, namely the castle of
Hammershus, a 13th-century medieval ruin located on the ‘romantic’ tip of
Denmark’s solitary rock island Bornholm, and the Viking Ship Museum
in Roskilde on Zealand (see Haldrup and Larsen, 2003; Larsen, 2005;
Bærenholdt and Haldrup, 2004, 2006). Within the context of social and cul-
tural theories of tourism, these two sites are particularly interesting as they
are emblematic of the way performances in cultural tourism have been con-
ceived. Both sites are what Benjamin (1973) calls ‘auratic objects’ – material
sites that are presumed to possess an inherent authenticity in contrast to
mass-produced cultural images and objects. Meanwhile, the two sites are also
performed differently, both in the ways they are staged and in the way tourists
experience them; a difference that justifies our combination of these two
cases, as revealed later. Thirdly, and finally, we return to the question of
authenticity in cultural consumption and ask whether and how authenticity
is still relevant for the analysis of performance in cultural tourism.
176
Performing cultural attractions 177
2 FROM AUTHENTICITY TO PERFORMANCE IN

TOURISM
Current discussions of the alleged rise of an ‘Experience Economy’ (see

Jensen, 1999; Pine and Gilmore, 1999) seem in many ways to have re-
actualized discussions on the relation between leisure, experience and
authenticity that for long have been central to tourist studies. Indeed, the
central arguments for the hypothesis of a coming Experience Economy
closely follows the observations of Lash and Urry (1994: 259) who argued
that the succession of ‘organized, fordist capitalism’ with disorganized,
postfordist capitalism implied ‘the end of tourism’ as ‘touristic’ forms of
cultural consumption disseminated into the spheres of work and everyday
life. In the introduction to a recent compilation on the Experiencescapes of
the new economy, O’Dell puts tourism and the experience economy into the
same formula by arguing:
As a commodity of tourism, ‘culture’ is constantly being packaged and sold to

us in terms of such things as difference, otherness, heritage, cultural identity,
song, dance, music and art (. . .).’ (2005: 19; see also Bryman, 2004)
The tacit assumption – that culture is what the tourists want and experi-
ence is what they get – is, however, not unproblematic. The concepts of
experience and authenticity have over the years been treated with some
suspicion in social science and cultural readings of tourism. Thus, three
decades ago, humanistic geographer Edward Relph remarked (with
slightly hidden contempt) that ‘the purpose of travel (in tourism) is less to
experience unique and different places than to collect those places (espe-
cially on film)’, (1976: 85).
Relph’s dismissal of ‘experience’ as a relevant category for understand-
ing tourism may seem paradoxical. Not only have tourist theories in recent
years been busy in defining and refining the forms of ‘the tourist experi-
ence’, it is also often simply taken for granted that tourism basically can be
conceived of as a quest for experiences (in contrast to everyday life). Relph’s
comment, however, drew on a long tradition of conceiving tourist experi-
ences as shallow, superficial, ‘fake’ and so on – a tradition that peaked with
Daniel Boorstin’s (1962) cultural (conservative) critique of tourism as a
contrived quest for pseudo-events and places. While much tourism the-
orizing after Boorstin (e.g. MacCannell 1976; Urry [1990] 2002) has explic-
itly departed from Boorstin’s cultural conservatism, Relph’s summary
highlights two important characteristics also of much later work and theo-
ries on tourism: firstly, that tourism is assumed to be concerned with places,
sites and attractions; secondly, that tourists’ interests in these are primarily
visual. Hence, the preoccupation with the alleged spectacular and ‘exotic’
sites for tourist performances and their primarily visual consumption have
been key features in social theories of tourism and have also been broadly
adopted by social, cultural and business-oriented work on the role of cul-
tural attractions in tourism.
In MacCannell’s (1976) now classic response to Boorstin, The Tourist. A
New Theory of the Leisure Class, he insisted that, contra Boorstin’s argu-
ment, the tourist had to be conceived of as a sincere seeker of ‘authentic-
ity’. This was a quest often betrayed by tourist industries, locals and so on,
nevertheless MacCannell argued that tourist performances were informed
by a genuine and sincere interest in the lives, social relations, cultures, arti-
facts and heritage of other people. Building on MacCannell’s argument,
tourism research has seen a host of studies and writings refining and devel-
oping this thesis (see Bruner, 1994; Cohen, 1979, 1988; Halewood and
Hannan, 2001; MacCannell, 1976; Olsen, 2002; Selwyn, 1996; Wang, 1999,
2000, to track this debate). Also Urry’s paradigmatic work, The Tourist
Gaze (1990), basically followed this with its emphasis on the ‘spectacular’
and visual qualities of tourist sites. Urry argued that the consumption of
places, sights and attractions should be seen within a larger framework of
the modern sign economy emphasizing difference and the disciplining
of ‘the gaze’ to perceive certain spots as delightful, interesting and so on.
The main line of reasoning in this debate seems to have been to approach
the role of significant cultural attractions in tourism as ‘drawers’ without
scrutinizing how events, cultural institutions and heritage become embed-
ded in the interpretive and performative repertoire of visitors. That is, how
they become attractions capable of ‘drawing’ people, hence tying them to
the tourist industry and not mere dead institutions and things.
While much tourist analysis following the seminal work of MacCannell
(1976) and Urry ([1990] 2002) has emphasized how tourists visually
consume the places, sites and attractions they encounter, a distinct ‘perfor-
mance turn’ can be traced in tourism theory and research from the late
1990s onwards (Bærenholdt, Haldrup, Larsen and Urry, 2004; Coleman
and Crang, 2002; Edensor, 1998; Minca and Oakes, 2006; Sheller and Urry,
2004). The ‘performance turn’ departs from classical mainstream tourism
theories by displacing studies of symbolic meanings and discourses with
embodied, collaborative and technologized doings and enactments. It high-
lights the body and the corporeality and expressiveness of performance by
stressing the significance of embodied encounters with other bodies, tech-
nologies and material places. However, ‘performances’ can take on many
meanings, and have done so in the social sciences. In the following we
briefly introduce three different approaches to the study of performance
(see Larsen, 2005, for the following).
The main (social) theorist of the concept of performance was Goffman,

who outlined a ‘dramaturgical’ framework to describe everyday social
encounters and interaction. For Goffman, the self is a performed charac-
ter, a public performer with carefully managed impressions. People,
Goffman argued, reflexively and strategically move between different
sociospatial stages (or regions) that require and allow specific perform-
ances. Goffman calls these ‘front-stages’ and ‘back-stages’. A public per-
formance is put on show in the former and these performances may
‘knowingly contradict’ in the latter as ‘back-stage’ regions allow masks to
be lifted temporally (1959: 114). Central to performance is the idea that ‘a
correctly staged and performed scene leads the audience to impute a self to
a performed character, but this imputation – the self – is a product of the
scene that comes of it’ (1959: 252).
Hence, Goffman argues that performances are socially negotiated not only
between actors but also with a present or imagined audience in mind.
Performances require audiences: real or imagined, now or later. In Goffman’s
work, performances are about ‘giving off’ impressions before an audience.
Goffman has inspired several influential tourist researchers. The notions
of front-stage and back-stage regions influenced MacCannell’s (1976) clas-
sical idea that tourists travel to experience back-stage authenticity but often
end up with ‘staged authenticity’, that is, front-stage shows. More recently,
Edensor (1998, 2001) has drawn on Goffman’s concept of performance,
noting that Goffman’s emphasis on the reflexivity of agents seems to ignore
that much everyday practice (and perhaps tourist practices in particular) is
carried out in a habitual and routinized mode of behaviour often repro-
ducing cultural scripts and social relations that are precisely not reflexively
monitored and adjusted.
In her work on the construction of gender and sex, Judith Butler puts
forward a different approach to performance, a performativity approach.
Her notion of performativity does not work with an agentive and acting
subject but with a subject that is produced within routinized performances.
Performativity bears a resemblance to Foucault’s rethinking of power; it is
not: ‘the act by which a subject brings into being what she/he names, but,
rather . . . the reiterative power of discourse to produce the phenomena
that it regulates and constrains’ (Butler, 1993: 2).
According to Butler, performances are produced by power’s social script
rather than by people’s performance abilities, as in the work of Goffman
(Gregson and Rose, 2000: 441). In this approach, performativity and per-
formance highlight the forced repetition of norms that reproduce and
cement (rather than destabilize) cultural identities.
In addition to these two approaches, a third, but more diverse, approach
makes the embodied and material aspects of performance central. This
approach is particularly represented by the ‘non-representational’ geogra-

pher Nigel Thrift. It argues that the ‘social world’ and places are produced
through everyday performances of doing and acting (Thrift, 2004). In
Thrift and Dewsbury’s words: ‘It emphasizes the flow of practice in every-
day life as embodied, as caught up with and committed to the creation of
affect, as contextual, and as technologised through language and objects’
(2000: 415). It acknowledges that ‘the “material” and the “social” inter-
twine and interact in all manner of combinations’ (Thrift, 1996: 24). In
contrast to both Butler’s theory of coded performances and Goffman’s cal-
culating actor, this approach conceives of performance as an embodied and
material performance (Haldrup and Larsen, 2006) that most often is only
possible through the interaction with a variety of objects, machines and
technologies. Material cultures and technologies of tourism are crucial to
this as they enhance the physicality of the body and enable it to do and
sense ‘supernatural’ things. What is interesting is the interplay between the
‘performances’ of agents (tourists) and the ‘affordances’ of material spaces
(Haldrup and Larsen, 2006; Ingold, 2000). As Ingold emphasizes, human
perception, sensing and action is not ‘inside the head’ but ‘out there’ in the
world. They are effects not only of ‘a mind in a body, but of the organism
in its environment, and [is] tantamount to the organism’s own exploratory
movement through the world’ (2000: 3).
Drawing on Gibson (1977), Ingold goes on to argue that when we sense
(see, sniff, touch) an object or an environment we do not primarily see an
image-like outline of the object, we perceive what it affords and the kind of
practical, embodied actions through which it can be performed. Like this
it is argued the material environment and its objects ‘act back’ on the
perceiver.
Our approach takes its main inspiration from this third – but diverse –
position. In line with Ingold and Thrift we conceive of performance as
embodied and material practice. What typifies this performance approach
is that it deals with actions more than texts, with habits and expressive
powers of the body more than structures of symbols, with the social con-
struction of reality rather than its representation (Schieffelin, 1998: 194).
It is concerned with the art of producing now. However, what we can learn
from Butler’s discussion of performativity is that performances are also
about choreographies. Not only are experiences of the world always
mediated through the body and its active engagement with and sensing of
a material environment through the auditory, visual, olfactory and tactile
perception systems, but material affordances (as well as the social and cul-
tural) enforce particular embodied choreographies and scripts on us to be
enacted (Edensor, 2006). However, in contrast to a strict Butler interpre-
tation, we argue that performances are never completely choreographed.
Furthermore, as Goffman has argued, we have to remember the role of

the audience, also the future and imagined one. However, the Gibsonian
understanding in Ingold’s phenomenology does not leave much possibil-
ity for different interpretations, and more specifically for the role of
imagination and fantasy around histories, geographies and stories of
various kinds.
3 APPROACH AND CONTEXT OF CASE STUDIES
Tourists are not just written upon. They also enact and inscribe time and
space with their own ‘stories’. Tourism is performed rather than pre-
formed. Such a non-representational performance approach moves the
focus from consumption to how ordinary people, as creative, expressive,
hybridized beings, go about producing and experiencing cultural attrac-
tions. Having stated that our understanding of performance is beyond
symbolic communication and consumptions of signs (as also argued in
Gant, 2005), an approach that only focuses on the material and embodied
performance will not allow a deeper understanding of cultural experiences
that relate to heritage and involve a kind of citationary practice. In this
sense, there are imaginations, for example imaginative geographies or his-
tories that form a kind of repertoire. While these imaginations do not pre-
scribe or even determine performances, performances may very well
inscribe them (compare Gregory, 2004, on Orientalism). Performances are
not inscribed, but their performativity (and in this sense Butler can inspire)
precisely involves the ability to inscribe, use, draw on and change imagin-
ations and fantasies.
This means that our approach also has to take into account how con-
nections are performed, both in space and in time. Time can be folded, and
otherwise distant and past places can be enacted (see Jóhannesson, 2007).
Performance thus involves processes of scripting that make constellations
between past, present and future, momentarily performing proximity in the
form of memories, heritage or a combination of these. This is an approach
to history similar to that of Walter Benjamin (1998) and Negt and Kluge
(1987), since it acknowledges the vital connections between fantasies and
bodily encounters with objects, and the role of traces (Spuren), in people’s
mobile experiences (Er-fahrung).
Using the following two case studies, we will try to further develop such
an understanding. Both cases deal with the performance of cultural attrac-
tions in tourism, but they are doing this in different ways. They are both
explorative, since they have been used to develop our approach. The very
particular attempt of this chapter is to combine insights from both studies,
since they are rather different in several ways. The first case study on the
performance of tourist photography, based on Jonas Larsen’s PhD work,
originally took the practices of representing a cultural attraction, the
Hammershus ruin, as its point of departure. Hammershus is one of
Northern Europe’s largest medieval ruined castle and it is surrounded by,
and has spectacular and extensive views of, the sea, cliffs and dales. It was
‘discovered’ by Copenhagen-based poets and painters that scripted it as a
picturesque place and is still largely promoted as a place of romantic gazing
in brochures and postcards. The place has charmed tourists for some
150 years, but the study of how and why family tourists take photographs
led to new empirical findings, crucial to our development of the notion of
the ‘family gaze’ and the overall approach to performance in tourist prac-
tices (Larsen, 2005, 2006). It thus became a paradigmatic case, showing
something that was somehow unexpected and led to new approaches. This
was of course also based on the particular tourist practices at Hammershus,
which is more like a ‘sacred’ site, that most tourists on holiday on Bornholm
visit, not so much for cultural learning and education, but simply for the
pleasure of being together there.
The second case study of tourist practices, at the Viking Ship Museum,
was made by Jørgen Ole Bærenholdt and Michael Haldrup, on request
from Sheller and Urry (2004). Based on interviews and some observation,
this study came to address many of the fantasies and encounters performed
by tourists at a museum, much more actively performing cultural history.
The particularity of the Viking Ship Museum, reflected in our study, is that
it is also a much more international attraction, meaning that it has become
one of the top few places international tourists would go in the world to
experience the heritage of Viking ships.1 It is therefore no surprise that our
interviewees in this case study were more of the type of cultural and her-
itage tourist, in the search for attractive and educational sights. Although
this study was done following the first, and with a lot of inspiration derived
from that, it also added understandings leading to the concept of ‘fantas-
tic realism’. Furthermore, it ‘led back’ to the debate about authenticity that
will end this chapter.
We should make clear that our discussion of performance above
addresses the way this concept has been discussed in social and cultural
theory, while it does not cover the more applied fields of performance
design or, for example, ‘management performance’, though it may be very
relevant in these fields. So this chapter concentrates on how tourists them-
selves produce experiences, and we can only make a reference to other
studies of the way the Viking Ship Museum and its staff stage and partici-
pate in the production of experience (Bærenholdt and Haldrup, 2006;
Bærenholdt, 2007).
4 PERFORMING TOURIST PHOTOGRAPHY
Cultural studies of tourism have been dominated by a visual paradigm

emphasizing the object of the ‘tourist gaze’. This is also the case in more
business-oriented forms, such as discourse analysis and marketing research.
However, this section shows that even visual performances such as photo-
graphy are embodied performances and embedded in cultural scripts and
conventions about family life. It draws upon qualitative interviews and
visual ethnographies on photographing families touring and sightseeing the
medieval castle of Hammershus, on the Danish Island of Bornholm. The
analysis employs photographs made by the ‘picturing families’ as well as a
few collected photographs produced by tourists. It shows that tourists are
not just taking ‘postcard-like’ photographs of the castle but also perform-
ing their own personal photography dramas (this section builds upon
Haldrup and Larsen, 2003; Bærenholdt et al., 2004; Larsen, 2005).
The metaphor of a hermeneutic circle is often used by cultural researchers
to portray the choreographed nature – the performativity – of the way
tourists perform photography and experience places photographically. In
John Urry’s words:
Much tourism involves a hermeneutic circle. What is sought for in a holiday is a

set of photography images, which have already been seen in tour company
brochures or on TV programmes. While the tourist is away, this then moves on
to a tracking down and capturing of those images for oneself. And it ends up
with travellers demonstrating that they really have been there by showing their
version of the images that they had seen before they set off. (Urry, 2002: 129)
Thus, similar to Relph’s contention discussed above, that tourists consume

representations rather than places, this metaphor suggests that tourists
travel to see and photograph what they have already consumed in
brochures, travel programmes, TV series and so on. The metaphor thus
suggests that tourist photography is choreographed to such an extent that
it becomes a predictable ritual of ‘quotation’ where tourists are framed and
fixed rather than framing and exploring (see Osborne, 2000: 81). This
explains why most studies approach tourist photography through decoding
commercial photographs as these are believed to choreograph tourists’
cameras to such an extent that they return home with copies of the images
that lured them to travel in the first place (see discussion in Larsen, 2006).
The problem with the hermeneutic model is not that it stresses structures
of choreographies but that it does so in a too reductive and deterministic
fashion. It is too reductive as it understands the choreography of tourist
photography as purely cultural, representational or discursive. It overlooks
how humans such as guides, guards and professional photographers, and
material cultures such as information markers, fences and viewing stations

play their role in this process. Material objects are particularly important
at Hammershus. Markers inform that crawling, climbing and playing
around on the ruins are prohibited and clearly demarcated pathways ensure
orderly and safe strolling at a leisurely pace. Viewing stations and benches
with views turn it into what we might call a view-producing machine that
reproduces the enduring place image of Hammershus as a place of pic-
turesque scenery and romantic picturing (see Figure 9.1). These viewing
places energize much gazing and photographing.
The metaphor of the hermeneutic circle is too deterministic in the sense
that it portrays tourist photography as an overdetermined stage, and allows
no creativity, self-expression or the unexpected. Being apparently too auto-
matic and too instantaneous, it is not regarded as a performance like dance,
walking, painting and so on; it is preformed rather than performed. It thereby
sustains an unproductive dualism between production and consumption that
‘rapidly pacify tourists – that is they tend to experience, perceive and receive
but not do’ (Crang, 1999: 238). But our ethnographic observations and inter-
views at Hammershus show that most photography is densely embodied and
performed: tourists do photography, and it is something that they invest much
time, energy and creativity in. They enjoy looking out for photographic
scenes and experimenting with compositions, and their bodies erect, kneel,
bend sideways, forwards and backwards, lean on ruins, lie on the ground
when they frame and take photographs (see Bærenholdt et al., 2004).
And the metaphor of the hermeneutic circle is also too deterministic in
the sense that it overlooks the ‘social dramas’ of tourist performances.
This metaphor gives the impression that tourist photography is solely
about ‘consuming places’ (Urry, 1995). Grasping tourist photography as
a performance can highlight the embodied practices and social dramas of
tourist photography. The camerawork of tourists is not only concerned
with ‘consuming places’ (Urry, 1995) or hegemonic ‘place-myths’
(Shields, 1991) but also with producing social relations, such as family life
(Haldrup and Larsen, 2003; Bærenholdt, Haldrup, Larsen and Urry,
2004). Tourists perform photography in the company of significant others
(one’s family, partner, friends and so on) and with a (future) audience at
hand or in the mind. The performed aspects of photography are visible in
relation to posing for cameras and choreographing posing bodies. Tourist
photography is intricately bound up with self-presentation and monitor-
ing bodies, with ‘strategic impression management’ (Goffman, 1959).
Through tourist photography people stage and enact their desired togeth-
erness, wholeness and intimacy (Kuhn, 1995; Hirsch, 1997; Holland,
2001). We have coined the notion the family gaze (Haldrup and Larsen,
2003) to examine those tourist photography performances that revolve
Figure 9.1 Viewing station at Hammershus
around the production of social relations; with performing ‘familyness’.

For this gaze it is family members rather than spectacular tourist sights
that trigger camera actions.
Even at somewhere like Hammershus scripted and staged for ‘romantic
gazing’, the ‘family gaze’ structures much photography. As one father says:
‘I’ve taken two types of photos today. Some pure landscape pictures . . .
I’ve tried to capture the beautiful landscape motifs . . . And then of course
the other pictures where you photograph your kids against the historical
background; and . . . your kids in a funny situation where they’re unaware
of the camera.’ While the interviewees articulate a desire to capture roman-
tic images of the ruins and landscape of Hammershus, many tourists say
that holiday photography for them is family-orientated. They photograph
to make personal photographs rather than impersonal and boring postcard
photographs. As one woman says:
No, we haven’t taken photographs of Hammershus, we have taken atmospheric

pictures where the family is at the centre, you can see that it is holiday, and
Hammershus is in the background. But it [Hammershus] should not fill the
image, it is the family that should fill it, right? And then the little memory of
where we are. That has to be in the background.
Figure 9.2 Tourists’ ‘family gaze’ photo
Two versions of the ‘family gaze’ are enacted at Hammershus. The first
version makes pictures at rather than of Hammershus. For this ‘family gaze’,
attractions are not extraordinary on their own. Figure 9.2 is an example.
This picture could have been taken anywhere. This version of the ‘family
gaze’ is attracted to joyful family life rather than sights and picturesque
greatness, and order turns into a misshapen and indiscriminate assortment
of stones, benches, lawns, humans and so forth. It subverts the official
‘place-myth’ of romantic gazing and inscribes a new one of cosy and pleas-
ant family life.
The second version is not only shot at, but is also a picture of the
attraction. Figure 9.3 illustrates this style of the ‘family gaze’. This is a
picture with a well-composed balance of the family and Hammershus,
between being-there and being-together. The family is not outshining
Hammershus. Rather the ruin-castle is portrayed as awe-provoking, and
the photograph reproduces its romantic aura. Thus, this version of the
‘family gaze’ incorporates strong elements of the ‘romantic gaze’, and it
has a postcard-like feeling. Yet, by placing family members in the picture,
endlessly reproduced sights/images are inscribed with personal aura and
meanings. This version of the family gaze produces personalized post-
cards: it stages the family within the attraction’s socially constructed
aura.
187
Figure 9.3 Tourists’ ‘romantic, family gaze’ photo
This case study of tourist performance of photography has shown how

the family gaze deploys tourist attractions as stages for framing personal
stories. Photos are taken to consciously make memories for the future.
Although there can be different versions, giving more or less space to the cul-
tural attraction itself, the central motive in the tourist performance of pho-
tographing is to connect the pleasure of the present with that of the future
reworking of the memory. So, while there is actually a rather tacit anticipa-
tion of fantasy embedded in these practices, it is first and foremost the mate-
rial, bodily encounter with the site and its views that frames and triggers this
kind of tourist performance. It could be, and is actually, done in many
places, but it would not really produce experiences of the same quality,
without the particularity of the performance, that the specific site affords.
5 PERFORMING HERITAGE
Following the footsteps of Boorstin and MacCannell, regulated tourist

sights such as museums and heritage sights have always been central in
tourism research. However, studies have tended to reduce the question of
tourists’ perception of such sites to a narrow focus on the ‘proper’ readings
of their cultural significance. Hence, studies of cultural heritage in tourism
have focused on the inherent values of sites, often leading to futile dis-
cussions on, for example, learning/educational purposes versus play/
excitement. This is partly because of the strong grip the figure of the
‘authenticity’-seeking tourist has had on the theoretical imaginations of
tourist researchers (see introduction), partly because of worries within the
cultural sector itself about the dismal perspectives of processes of
‘disneyfication’ of cultural heritage. The traditional paradigm within
museum and heritage displays has to a large extent relied on a ‘hegemony
of the eye’ that separates the auratic object from the gazing spectator
(Hetherington, 1999, 2002). Furthermore, museum displays have con-
structed particular epistemic regimes by determining how the world and its
past are ordered, classified and framed (Hooper-Greenhill, 1994). But the
rise of the heritage industry has in important ways challenged the author-
ity of the museum (Walsh, 1992), paving the way for approaching heritage
sights as ‘sites of interpretation’ (Crang, 1994, 1996). In this section we do
not just want to point to this variety of interpretive possibilities but rather
to the fact that the perception of heritage is closely related to the embod-
ied and imagined performance of the past afforded by the material, social
and cultural setting of the site.
The central assets of the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde are its skills
and knowledge in traditional shipbuilding. Although the remains of the
five Viking wrecks are the very central objects exhibited in the ‘Viking Ship
Hall’ (from 1969), they are mainly gazed at in passing while visitors move
through to view other parts of the museum. The museum and the artificial
island of its location entails a strictly scripted choreography, meaning that
the typical visitor-flow passes exhibitions and the auratic, if not sacred,
wrecks (see Figure 9.4), before entering the hands-on Activity Room (see
Figure 9.5). Here they can enter two replicas of parts of ships, touch Viking
cloth, food, furs, ropes (replicas), dress up as a Viking with weapons, write
in runes and play Viking games, all carefully observed and accompanied by
actively communicating students. Finally, visitors can stop at posters, for
example a display of Viking sailing routes, before arriving at the museum
shop. But, outside the Viking Ship Hall, there is a small open-air museum
surrounded by water channels: The Museum Island. A collection of tradi-
tional Nordic ships (replicas) is anchored here. A ship is being built in the
open in ‘original ways’, and tourists can participate in sailing tours, knit-
ting, painting shields, making coins, or perhaps visit the archaeological
workshop, or simply have a pleasant time with refreshments in the central
cafe area (see Figure 9.6). There are also a timber yard and specific projects
and exhibitions for limited periods.
The self-perception and image of the Viking Ship Museum is closely tied
up with research and skills in producing and sailing replica ships, and with
the knowledge of researchers, craftsmen, sailors and guides (students). To
visitors, it is the interplay between the search for origins and the fascination
with the skills, characters and adventures of the Vikings that frames their
perception of the exhibitions. This difference also reflects different ways of
conceiving of and relating to heritage objects. Whereas much writing fol-
lowing Benjamin (1973) stresses the ‘auratic’ qualities of objects of art and
heritage, the visitors we interviewed stressed the capability to take posses-
sion of the past and connect with it as a central part of their perception of
the site. Some would even indicate that they conceived of the re-enactment
activities and replicas as even more real than the wrecks, displayed in the
hall, as stated by a Danish father with his family, interviewed beside the
wrecks in the Viking Ship Hall: ‘it does say much more to see them for real,
in the harbour – and these [wrecks in the Hall]. If I’ve seen one of them,
then it’s enough; four [there are actually five] is far too many, when you have
the ships outside’.
This conception of ‘the real’ only gives meaning insofar as one under-
stands reality, not as equal to the barren objects of the primary world, but
as a fantasized ‘second-world’ resurrection of how it ‘really’ was (on the
concept of ‘second-world’ see Tolkien, 1997: 137ff and discussion in
Bærenholdt and Haldrup, 2004). In contrast to the displayed wrecks (not
to be touched) the replicas could be used and tried out on the fjord. Hence
190
Figure 9.4 The wrecks, Viking Ship Hall
191
Figure 9.5 Activity room, Viking Ship Hall
192
Figure 9.6 Construction of replica of the ‘Skuldelev 2’ Viking Ship, 2003
they could provide a corporeal sense of how it ‘really’ was to be a Viking at

sea, in combat and so forth. This is a corporeal reality that also frames the
encounter with the five wrecks in the Hall. Interestingly, Benjamin distin-
guished between auratic objects and ‘traces’:
The trace is the manifestation of a closeness however distanced it may be. The
aura is the manifestation of a distance however close it may be. In the trace we
enter into the possession of the thing, in the aura the thing overpowers us.
(Benjamin, quoted in Markus, 2001)
The visitors did not only gaze at the auratic objects on display, but read them
as traces. The wrecks of the 10th- and 11th-century ships on display in the
museum are certainly framed and exhibited as auratic objects. However, it
is the replicas, the re-enactments and so forth that enable visitors to ‘take
possession of things’: to bridge the gap of ten centuries, fold time and make
them part of their lives. In that sense the Viking re-enactments, replicas and
events – and indeed also the wrecks – are not really interpreted as ‘auratic
objects’ but as traces of their own genealogy – their own identity.
The tracing of genealogy (biological or cultural) was of course central to
those visitors of Nordic origin but, in a much more general sense, the
journey into an imagined relived Viking world enabled visitors to take pos-
session of the objects at the museum. This fantastic realism tied further-
more into the embodied performances of tourists at the site (such as
rehearsing with swords, dressing up as a warrior’s wife and so forth). In this
sense the tracing of cultural roots, complemented by the fantastic world
constructed by popular culture, is equally important to tourist interpreta-
tion of the Viking relicts and re-enacted skills displayed. Two young sisters
from New York and California, who grew up in Taiwan, said that they had
little advance knowledge of the Vikings and their geography apart from
history classes and cartoons depicting Viking warriors with ‘horned hats’.
In response to the interviewer’s second question about Viking images, one
sister answered: ‘I think to me, though, that it is [the image of] an invader;
they invaded – for a period of time they dominated a lot of countries, and
it is more of a negative image.’ The interviewer’s intervention about Vikings
in Newfoundland reminds the other sister of something:
Oh, actually, I watched a TV programme on the History Channel talking about

that, and they were trying to figure out who actually discovered America first –
Columbus or someone else – and they did mention Vikings, but at some time
they mentioned the Chinese sailors, I don’t know how many years ago, and the
whole programme struck me very much, because of the Chinese, not because of
the Vikings . . . we grew up in Taiwan . . . so I hoped the Chinese discovered
America.
They are eagerly positive about their experiences at the museum and all the
great explanations given by the guides and the film, fascinated with a world
totally detached from their own world and their own heritage. This fantas-
tic world of the Vikings is particularly important in triggering off the
hands-on activities in the rather dark, adventurous Activity Room, where
you can dress up as a Viking in coats of mail with swords, play games and
write in runes. Visitors on sightseeing tours from Copenhagen put a lot of
effort into their activities, including photography, when they arrive at this
rather dark room to dress up playfully after passing through the simple, rig-
orously modern exhibition of the original remains of the ships. However,
the fantastic elements of the Viking world also play a significant role for
visitors trying to trace ancestors or cultural heritage. A middle-aged couple
from Hawaii were on their way through Denmark, the Frisian Islands and
the Netherlands. They had visited the Museum Island the evening before
and come back on this bright summer morning (the Museum Island is open
to the public) before the museum opened. As they put it, they were ‘looking
for dead Europeans’: 17th-century ancestors from Norway–Denmark
and the Frisian Islands. Standing beside the 30-metre long ship replica
under construction, they were fascinated by the ‘lifeworld’ of the Vikings
as directly compared with their own environment and modernity:
She: ‘For us it is very hard to understand living on the ocean, living on a ship for
an extended time, because we have seen the ocean where we live [Hawaii]; some-
times it is very calm, but at other times, like during hurricanes, it is very wild;
and they were very strong people, very creative and very clever at figuring out
how to survive.’
He: ‘. . . and it’s unbelievable that they could build anything this modern’.
Vikings are admired for being ‘creative’ and ‘clever’ and for having built and
sailed ships that were ‘this modern’. This belief in the fantastic world of the
Vikings is more than just praise of their skills. Skills are associated with
characters and in turn they relate to their own genealogy by joking about
the Viking-like characters of their relatives (fishermen of Norwegian origin
in Seattle). The very reason for going back this morning was to take photo-
graphs of the replica under construction, ‘because we are trying to explain
to our grandchildren – their heritage, and this helps . . . And I’m so inter-
ested and amazed that long ago people had developed crafts; they were not
literate, they had to make it originally’.
Indeed, the genealogical search is a performance of heritage over long dis-
tances, where photographs help to build the connections and identifications.
These identifications are performed as part of the general ancestor-search
programme of the European tour, where they compare the geographies of
challenging seas, personal characters and the building of skills across time
and space. Another American couple, from Utah, talked about connections
of the same kind. Their grandparents were among the many late 19th-
century emigrants from Denmark to America. Again, genealogy was asso-
ciated with the Viking world:
She: ‘We’ve heard about Vikings all of our lives – in history we studied in school,
and of course being Danish I was interested in anything connected with the Danes.’
He: ‘And the Vikings, as I understand it, were very strong, outdoor-type people.
Today we live in nice houses, have nice things – the Vikings didn’t have that, they
had a strong character, different than people today, different than American
people, Danish people, it was a different culture altogether’. (. . .) ‘heritage, it
helps us that our forældre [the Danish word for “parents”. He may have meant
forfædre, i.e. the Danish word for ancestors/forefathers] were good people; they
were trying to live the best they could, at the time when they lived, and they liked
adventure’ (. . .).
She: ‘They weren’t afraid to try new things and tried to make their lives better,
you know; this is the way I feel about my forefathers when they came to America.’
The Viking world is a world of adventure, open to innovation; and inter-

estingly, these capabilities are directly associated with the interpretation of
ancestors’ migrations to the deserts in Arizona, a place that was hard for
them to comprehend, compared with ‘green Denmark’. While the ships evi-
dently triggered off their imagination, the central concern of this couple
was to resurrect the Vikings, their morals and ‘life worlds’ as role models
for present-day beliefs and ways of life.
The Viking Ship Museum obviously affords a wide range of interpretative
possibilities. People engage in different practices, and there is an equally wide
range of options for linking up with other aspects of the world of the Vikings.
However, there is always a dynamic interplay between an interest in the real
object and the fantastic iconography that people carry with them from other
media. The fantastic world of their imaginations goes hand-in-hand with the
tracing of their own pasts and has significant implications for the way they
interpret the re-enacted activities and skills as well as the original Viking
ships. The free play of fantasy and the search for authentic knowledge of
their ancestors or their cultural heritage intersect and blend in important
ways. In contrast to the displayed wrecks (not to be touched), the replicas
could be used and tried out on the fjord. Hence they could provide a corpo-
real sense of how it ‘really’ was to be a Viking at sea, in combat and so forth.
In this case study we have seen that popular imagination and the search
for origins can be important elements in people’s interpretation of heritage
places. The fantastic realism of the Viking world facilitates an imaginative
repossession of the past. To some extent this reflects a nostalgia for the place
of origin, a nostalgia for the ‘roots’ of ancestors comparable to the
‘genealogical tourism’ of Irish Americans, for example (Nash, 2003).

However traces and marks inscribed by the Vikings in the Northern
Hemisphere guarantee their omnipresent status and enable us to appropri-
ate a Viking past. In that sense Viking culture can be called a rhizomatic
culture – a culture of flows, connections, intersections and mobilities rather
than of hierarchy – characteristics that resemble the alleged ‘deterritorial-
ization’ experienced in the 21st century. Thus everyone (that is, ‘white’
Europeans or European descendants, for we must not forget the high degree
of ethnocentricity in the fascination with the Vikings) is able to strike out
on the trails into this secondary world, to claim the legacy of the Viking
world and make it part of their living history. And in this way the scope of
the imagined entrance to the trails of the Viking is globalized as heritage dis-
plays, symbols, objects and themes circulate, and are taken possession of, in
very different geographical settings (see, particularly, Hendry, 2000). The
growing body of circulating Viking objects, books, iconographies, myths
and legends, heroic characters and so on, is all part of a ‘prosthetic culture’
(Lury, 1998) enabling people to take possession of their past, and thus to
construct a sense of genealogy and identity from the world of the Vikings.
The fantastic realism involved in shipbuilding, sailing replica ships, dressing
up, playing Viking games or re-enacting warrior practices tells a story about
pleasure and meaning, fun and historical imagination. Our interviews with
tourist visitors to the Viking Ship Museum, from Americans searching for
ancestors to Danish families with children, expose fantasy productions and
performances of Viking skills, characters and geographies, where pleasure
and the formation of meaning and identity go hand-in-hand.
Meanwhile, this case study has also shown that the encounters with
material objects, like Viking ships, whether ‘original’ wrecks, ‘real’ replica
ships or staged in Activity Room settings, affords the performance of the
heritage experience. There is thus an intricate connection between bodily
encounters with objects and the kinds of fantasies performed, and it is in
order to understand this connection that we have coined the concept of fan-
tastic realism. On this basis, we can re-address the ‘classical’ issue of
authenticity in order to clarify and develop this concept so that it can reflect
on the types of tourist performance that we have studied as the family gaze
and fantastic realism.
6 CONCLUSION: PERFORMING CONNECTIVE

AUTHENTICITY
One problem with the performance metaphor in social theory and tourist
studies is that many associate performance with a trickster world of false
impressions, of acting. For example, in MacCannell’s (1976) writing, it

sometimes seems that modern tourism alludes to nothing but mobile signs
and ‘staged authenticity’. However, all cultures are constructed and ‘on the
move’ and therefore in a sense contrived or inauthentic; they are fabrica-
tions in the sense of something made and performed.
The debate on authenticity following MacCannell (1976) and Cohen
(1979) has tended to focus on the misfit between tourists’ performances and
experiences and the ‘authenticity’ authorized by official institutions (such
as heritage management, museums and so on). Wang (2000) constructively
distinguishes between three types of authenticity which he calls objective,
constructive and existential authenticity.
Whereas objective authenticity signifies what is the common usage of the
word by the cultural sector and disciplines, constructive authenticity refers
to the authenticity projected onto the objects and relicts toured by
tourists/visitors. In addition to these two types of object-related authentic-
ity, Wang argues that a third type of activity-related existential authentic-
ity, based on achieving a potential authentic state of Being (for oneself or
in relation to significant others) is equally important for understanding the
production of tourist experiences. In the discussion above it may roughly
be argued that the ‘family gaze’ discussed in the first case study relates to
an existential sense of authenticity whereas the fantastic realism discussed
in the latter case study relates to Wang’s constructive authenticity. However
we want to argue that this is too simplistic a model.
In this chapter we have shown how meanings and performances at two
cultural attractions in Denmark – both central sites in contemporary sight-
seeing practices for both Danish and foreign tourists – are far from
reducible to the ‘inherent’ authenticity of the relicts and ruins to be seen,
symbols projected or social relations implicit at the sites. To the contrary
we have shown how experiences produced at the two sites depend on a
variety of ‘distant others’. As the first example showed, the anticipated
audience of the family in a home setting is absolutely crucial for structur-
ing what we termed the family gaze. The family gaze at the castle draws on
the future audiences for reading personal photographs. It produces an
imagination of a perfect family life in an era of fluid and flexible intimate
relationships. This does not mean that the castle is eradicated from the
future memory produced here; rather, that it is converted into backcloth
and set pieces for performing the perfect family – an experience to remem-
ber. As the second example showed, popular culture, reflections on cultural
identity and genealogy are equally important in enabling visitors to ‘experi-
ence’ authentic Viking life. It is the global web of circulating signifiers medi-
ated through films, images, objects, and narratives that enables people to
take possession of and identify with the past. The notion of fantastic
realism then captures how such mediators enable people to experience ‘how
it really was’ without reducing this to the reproduction of contrived,
superficial clichés about the past. In this way both of these notions, family
gaze and fantastic realism, open up for a broader conception of what
‘authentic experiences’ implies – a conception that goes beyond futile
dichotomies between authentic and contrived experiences.
In this process distant places and people (imagined or real) play a crucial
role in determining what performances particular sites and places afford.
This is not the same as to say that tourist places and sites are only imagined
and that one perception may be just as good as the other. Nor is it, as Crang
points out, ‘about the image of places as beheld by tourists, but rather the
processes and practices of signification – where tourism takes up discourses
and representations and uses them in ordering places, making meanings,
making distinctions, and thus making places through actions’ (2006: 48).
Instead of looking merely at the experience of places and sites as a
process of interpretation, we argue that this process should be seen as a
process of production in which particular experiences are produced in
accordance with the affordances of specific sites as they are connected to
distant places and others which are drawn into the orbit of the particular
performances enacted. These performances are not pre-scribed, but they
certainly involve crucial practices of scripting. This move also implies a
reversing of the problem of ‘authenticity’. Instead of looking for desires or
motives of tourists/visitors, we have to pay much more attention to the con-
nections that produce particular experiences.
This understanding is a move away from the Cartesian dichotomy
between objects in the environment and the acting human. Authenticity is
thus not only something objective, with inherent qualities of objects, nor is
it only constructive or existential in the sense of qualities ascribed to expe-
riences only because of the more or less independent actions of the tourist
actor. We are well aware that Wang’s typology is more complex than it may
look, but, in this principal argument, we contend that both of our case
studies, across their obvious differences, reveal an intrinsic relation between
the performance of tourists and the affordance of tourist attractions, which
makes what seems to be two sides actually easier to understand as rela-
tional. Smart new terms for this would be ‘perfordance’ if not ‘afformance’,
central to experience. As stressed by Gunnar Thór Jóhannesson (2007),
such a relational approach is much more than just understanding tourist
practices as external relations between actors and objects. It involves a
focus on the practices or politics of connectivity itself.
In this chapter, we began by stressing the role of tourists in performing
experiences themselves, also popular in the marketing discourse. In
conclusion, however, the theoretical discussion of performance as it was
developed with two different case studies, first pointed to the crucial role of
the bodily encounters with material objects and environments at the sights
and sites of tourist attractions. Performances are thus not independent of
the affordances of sights and sites, the full consequence of this being that
performances and affordances can hardly be separated. This move follows
the phenomenological and Gibsonian inspiration basic to the first part of
our approach to performance, as inspired also by Tim Ingold, among
others. It means transcending the Cartesian dichotomy that many have
taken for granted, between actor performances and object affordances.
However, a second move was also necessary, not least because of the empir-
ical findings in both case studies. Tourist experiences of both family gaze
and fantastic realism, across their differences, involve important connec-
tions in time and space between the concrete place of experience and
imaginations spanning from past (for example fantastic) heritage to the
anticipation of future (for example family) memory work.
Thus tourist experiences, as performed and afforded, are not pre-scribed
by already set choreographies, but they certainly involve the scripting of the
concrete encounters with the no less concrete imaginations and meanings
of these encounters, and these imaginations and meanings are easily bound
up with more or less far away events and practices. In this sense, if we want
to embrace a concept of authenticity with tourist experience, the relations
involved are more than the professional institutionalization of the authen-
ticity of the object by museums curators and the like. They are also more
encompassing than the tourists’ own constructions and existential feelings
of authenticity. If we should conceive of authenticity in the performance
and affordance of tourism, this is a form of connective authenticity, and we
have suggested Benjamin’s concept of the trace as a key inspiration to such
an understanding.
Whether we investigate the performance of family or cultural tourism, it
is the traces across past, present and future, and across spatial distance, that
are the connections tourists perform. In this way, to perform tourist attrac-
tions means scripting imaginations tourist places afford to which to be
connected. But it is still the concrete bodily performances in tourist places
that let material encounters allow fantasies to unfold.
NOTE
1. The only major competitor is still the more traditional Viking Ship Museum on Bygdøy
in Oslo, though ambitious plans for a new Stockholm Viking Centre have recently been
launched (Dagbladet Roskildet, 5 and 6 January 2007). However this museum will proba-
bly not have the same focus on the ships.
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10. On sense and sensibility in
performative processes
Henriette Christrup
1 INTRODUCTION
The focus of this chapter is face-to-face interaction in performance and in

processes involving experience research, design and construction in the
context of performance production. In general, the potential for experi-
ences inherent in performance is unique thanks to the multifaceted inter-
actions between the performers, between performers and audience, and
between the members of the audience itself. Performance is also a unique
setting for experiences, in that all the senses can be stimulated at one and
the same time.
These features can be illustrated by a performance that is well known to
most people: a church service. Services in the Catholic Church comprise a
particularly well-suited example. Attending a service, one is bombarded by
sensory impressions: brightly coloured glass mosaics that are beautiful to
behold, the scent of incense and oils, the swell of organ music forming a
background for the murmuring of the priest, the taste of the Host – and
then the prayer for peace, a cry from the heart where the individual pro-
nounces the prayer with heartfelt energy while moving, reaching out and
touching their neighbour’s hand: Space Atmosphere where spirituality is
materialized. In the church, sensory impressions are woven into ritual
actions and symbols. For some of the faithful this creates a holistic experi-
ence with the feeling of being united and belonging.
In contrast to church services, a great many performances are created on
the basis of commercial interest. A key question is whether it is possible to
create interaction between innovation based on financial interest, on the
one hand, and, on the other hand, human interest, human development
and communities. From theoretically-based reference points and the exam-
ples of performance on which I focus, I would like to initiate a reflection on
this central issue.
I develop two theoretically-based points of reference which include models
that can inspire and be utilized by professional, reflective practitioners in a
203
multitude of interactive processes and contexts with performance experience

production. The first, ‘Space–Spirit Interaction’, provides dimensions for
comprehending experiences, interactions and human development possibili-
ties; and the application of this reference point is illustrated by (a) experience
research in a performance theatre installation, (b) a research interview in
order to discover seeds of potential for innovative measures in the tension
between human development potentials and commercial interests, and
(c) experience construction at a festival, inter alia a lounge.
The second, ‘Managing the multifaceted, chaotic and uncontrollable’,
provides models and tools for the professional, reflective practitioner with
which to handle the creative processes involved in design and construction
of performances, where people with totally different competences are drawn
in. The application of this reference point is illustrated by management of
the construction process of the above-mentioned lounge at a festival. The
article results in an attempt to comprehend fundamental competences in
professionals working innovatively with processes connected with perfor-
mance, and a vision is developed concerning inner freedom and life-expand-
ing movement in production communities.
2 SPACE–SPIRIT INTERACTION
2.1 Experiencing
The significance of the emotions for experiences is clearly expressed by

Olafur Eliasson, the Danish light artist whose works are known through-
out the world. Expectations, knowledge and memories influence the expe-
rience, and ‘the filtering mechanism of the memory at the moment of
perception is always influenced by our emotions. If one is depressed, one
will always be aware of everything in one’s surroundings that confirm and
reinforce one’s gloomy mood while simultaneously instinctively ignoring
the brighter sides of life. Emotions are not merely a form of embedment in
the experience of reality; they are fundamental and potentially colour and
dominate experience or our ability to experience anything at all’ (Engberg-
Pedersen and Meyhoff, 2004 p. 57). With this insight concerning the
significance of emotions and memory for experiences, Olafur Eliasson has
programmatically said, ‘What we have in common is that we are different’,
and with his works he wants to explore and challenge the individual’s sense
perceptions and experience of ‘seeing oneself perceive’.
Olafur Eliasson’s creative basis is underpinned by brain research, even
though research is as yet unable to explain the way in which the brain
processes the stimuli that become a total experience through sensory
On sense and sensibility in performative processes 205
impression. For example, conflicting theories exist on how bodily emo-

tional innovations affect the consciously subjective experience (Damasio,
1994; Kringelbach, 2004).
In spite of individual differences in memories, knowledge and expecta-
tions, it is precisely in live performance that special possibilities exist to
influence emotions that have an impact on the experience. The participants’
emotions can be expressed so that they can be heard (laughter, for example)
and that has an impact on the interaction processes between performer and
participant and between the participants themselves. Emotions can also be
read physically, consciously or unconsciously, and in this way they are con-
tagious. Moreover, the heart’s electromagnetic field is susceptible to emo-
tions, and waves from this field can influence another person’s state at a
distance of up to 1.5 metres (McCraty, 2004). Last but not least, we can
touch each other, move together, smell and taste the other, feel the other’s
coldness/warmth. There thus exists a field of potentiality for common emo-
tional experiences that can be read as Space Atmosphere, at the same time
as there being a multitude of differences in the content of consciousness:
associations and thoughts rooted in individual experiences and memories.
2.2 The Model
I see emotions as the major dimension in my specific model with a focus on

the universal order so that it is applicable in the exploration and construc-
tion of experiences on the basis of the professional intention concerning
the individual or the common development.
At first there is a graphic presentation of the model (Figure 10.1) with
a very brief description of the intention behind its dimension and com-
ponents. It is then developed at the same time as its applicability is illus-
trated by means of experience research in the Performance Theatre
Installation, ‘The Black Rose Trick’, created by the Danish performance
artist Signa Sørensen, who is known internationally for her performances.
The ‘Black Rose Trick’ has been chosen because of its innovative
approach to the theme of individual-common development, with interac-
tions between professionals, amateurs and interactive audiences over the
course of many days, and it has been very successful when measured in
the inflow of participants. About 3000 people ventured in on the ten days
the performance lasted, in March 2005. The tickets cost DKK 100. And
many returned: a total of 11 000 crossed the threshold to the theatrical
installation. The performance theatre installation itself was constructed
as a huge hotel connected with a totalitarian military regime in which
you as a visitor became involved. One could even spend the night there
(Sørensen, 2005).
Space Time Interaction Engagement
Performer Participant
Fear Anger Shame Contempt Fright Pain Interest Joy
Ego Roulette Jolly Chor(a)
Kairos Coherence
Identity-creating process
Figure 10.1 The model: space–spirit interaction
In their mutual interaction, the dimensions of space, time, interaction,

engagement may be understood as important conditions for experiences.
According to context and performance, different markers can be placed on
these four dimensions; for example, at the time dimension, the way in which
the music or the dramaturgy structures time. Another example could be
flow, as a marker on the dimension of engagement (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997).
The dimension with the fundamental emotions – fear, anger, shame, con-
tempt, fright, pain, interest, joy – can be utilized to comprehend an import-
ant aspect of the experience, both at individual level and in interaction
processes. I use the metaphor, the Ego Roulette, for interactions based on
fear, anger and shame, while I use the metaphor, Jolly Chor(a), meaning a
big heart/heart space, for individual experiences and interactions that
emanate from the emotions of joy and interest. The curved line with an
arrow moving from the Ego roulette to Jolly Chor(a) indicates human
development in an Identity Creating Process in which, among other things,
Kairos (intense moments that open a window on new actions) can lead to
a more sustained psycho-physiological state termed Coherence.
2.3 Model View of the ‘Black Rose Trick’
The ‘Black Rose Trick’ is, as previously mentioned, built up as a hotel con-
nected with a military regime: terrifying military personnel move around all
over the place. The basic note of fear is struck already when the identity card
is issued and sign-in procedures are implemented – and also pain: staying at
the hotel implies a risk of contracting a deadly virus, the evidence of which
can also be seen in the eyes. The state of emergency-like situation makes treat-
ment practically impossible. Even the chief doctor has been infected with this
virus, and the hotel’s hospital ward functions badly. A ‘bleak’ atmosphere is
created through themes, interior, scenography, costumes and objects.
The ‘Black Rose Trick’ performance theatre installation can be charac-
terized in the following way in the four upper dimensions of the model:
space, time, interaction, engagement. The participants themselves can
choose which of the hotel spaces they would like to move around in and
when: for example, the hospital ward, the restaurant with variety show and
bar, or the owner’s bedroom – the so-called bridal suite. The choices they
make determine the interaction possibilities with performers that have been
trained to play a character that is to enter into interaction with the hotel
guests to challenge and seduce, so that the participant dares to launch a
process of self-discovery. Lose oneself and find oneself again. Widely
differing types of engagement can be observed, ranging from distant, obser-
vant rejection of a performer’s approach to the participant who is totally
absorbed in the interaction with a military person. The performers’ choice
of space and order, their engagement through the concrete interactions,
especially the conflicts that also arise between the performers themselves,
determine the development over time, where general themes and the time
span and duration were fixed in advance: ten consecutive days.
As an experience researcher, I get close to an interaction in one of the
parts of the hotel. The guests are sitting relaxing in one of the hotel’s ‘warm-
hearted spaces’ decorated in red, where stage, bar, casinos and restaurant
have become one, and are being entertained by a divo and three divas with
music from the 1940s and 1950s that helps to create a ‘bleak’ atmosphere.
The guests are looking curiously into a series of chambres séparées, where
secret negotiations and small intimate meetings seem to be taking place, and
they are also fascinated by other guests’ total absorption in a game of poker.
A guest moves up to the bar. Wants food. Potato soup is the only possibil-
ity, but one look into the indescribably filthy kitchen appears to make her
have second thoughts. Yes, she would like some soup even if she will have to
wait for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes she goes up to the bar again. The soup
is not ready. She looks aggressive but apparently does not dare to react. It
will be another half hour before she can get her soup. I become curious –
talk to her. She tries to take a rational approach to the situation, but is
herself surprised that her anger is so extreme that she does not dare to react.
The fifth dimension of the model with the fundamental emotions can be
used to understand important features of experiences where we observed
the anger of the guest as the dominant emotion. The atmosphere that is
created through the consistent ‘tristesse’ can also be characterized in this
dimension, inasmuch as the attempted bleak atmosphere in the ‘Black Rose
Trick’ is experienced as being based on pain/sorrow:
fear anger shame contempt fright pain interest joy.
2.4 Emotions and Basic Existential Conditions
The following elaboration of the dimension with the fundamental emotions

is based on neuroscience (Davidson, 2003; Kringelbach, 2004) and psycho-
logical research (Chodorow, 1991; Ekman, 2003; Jung, 1979; Stewart, 1987).
Emotions are universal and can be recognized in every culture as con-
scious experiences to which specific facial expressions are linked. Emotions
thus have a universal material form of expression. The most recent brain
research also shows that they have a material basis and it suggests where
they are represented in the brain.
The basic emotions are innate and are developed through our interac-
tions with the surrounding world. They can be measured as physiological
changes, such as blood pressure and heartbeat and other expressions of the
autonomous nervous system. The universal emotions are tied to basic
human conditions: the unknown, inhibitions to development, rejection,
unexpected events, loss, the new, the known:
unknown hindrance rejection unexpected loss the new the known
fear anger shame contempt fright pain interest joy.
Compound emotions are developed through the socialization process on

the basis of the fundamental emotions; for example, anger is at the core of
hatred, suspicion, envy and jealousy. The emotions can be described more
subtly on a scale of strength from low arousal to high arousal, for example
anger, from irritation to fury.
The model’s emotions dimension can be used as an overall, universally and
materially anchored reference point both when constructing experiences
through the spaces’ materiality and interactions and in experience research.
Its application has already been demonstrated by means of examples from
the ‘Black Rose Trick’, but I intend to develop the model further to make it
usable in understanding experiences in interactions.
2.5 Universal Reactions
Universal existential situations can take quite different forms for each of us.
Through the socialization process, for instance, for one person rejection can
be closely linked to the father figure, and for another person the mother
figure. This will be significant for the concrete design of spaces with inter-
action possibilities, where the intention is for the participants to turn on
emotionally and have strong experiences. But here also I try to find some
universal reactions and interactions in the way the fundamental emotions
are civilized through upbringing; for example, anger can be expressed as
moralizing, which may be termed an ‘ego reaction’.
Ego reactions are created in the past when the small child in life-
expanding movement with an embedded tension of joy, interest or enthusi-
asm is stopped or held back by adults. Being hindered in life-expanding
movements produces a reaction of anger in the child, sometimes to the
extent that the whole body is involved, with biting and kicking, mixed with
fear of the parents’ rejection. This state of tension with joy, anger, fear, guilt
and shame is painful. From the perspective of the child, it is a matter of
avoiding feeling these unpleasant, painful states of excitement that arise
because the child does not experience any mutuality in the contact, does not
feel itself to be seen, heard or understood in its life-expanding movement.
In order to protect itself and achieve control over the situation, the child
inhibits its breathing, develops physical muscular overload or underload, as
well as interpretations and reactions that are activated especially when one
feels under pressure. The ego reactions are based on pain and are an expres-
sion of negativity: I cannot trust myself in my life-expanding movement:
there is something wrong with me and I cannot have confidence in the envi-
ronment seeing, hearing and understanding me (Christrup, 2002, 2004).
The emotions constitute the fundament in ego reactions: anger, fear and
shame. A.H. Almaas operates with nine ego reactions with inspiration from
the East. These are merely a part of his large-scale theoretical work about spir-
itual development with nine facets, called the Enneagram (Almaas, 1998b).
2.6 Ego Roulette and Jolly Chor(a)
I shall develop the model (Figure 10.2), pointing to the fundamental emo-
tions with the nine ego reactions in my own formulation, with inspiration
from Almaas. I call the new elements in the model the Ego Roulette, because
one ego reaction, for example apportioning blame, often triggers an ego
fear anger shame interest joy
1. Moralising: positioning oneself as the Exhilaration, Passion,

perfect, the good person who assesses Joy, Happiness
others with contempt or respect
2. Manipulating: not directly expressing what Love, Care, Kindness,
one needs but pleasing and expressing ‘out of Appreciation
consideration for’
3. Promoting oneself at the expense of others Compassion, Tolerance
in individual endeavour Acceptance,
4. Controlling inner chaotic forces (e.g. jeal- Forgiveness
ously) with a visible danger of explosion
5. Retreating into oneself: almost in a trance Serenity, Inner Balance,
6. Adapting (timid) a universe defined by Reflection,
others Contentment
7. Planning for the future: imaginative, fleeing
from the present
8. Blaming others
9. ‘Falling asleep’: without feeling and
thoughts, indifference in passive aggression
Figure 10.2 Ego roulette and jolly chor(a)
reaction in the other person, for example moralizing or withdrawal. We can

observe a destructive interaction: the Ego Roulette is rolling.
On the joy side, the life-expanding part of the model with joy and inter-
est, I add an element: Jolly Chor(a). Chora means space, Cor means heart.
Thus Chor(a) heart space. The emotions I have mentioned in Jolly
Chor(a) are a sub-element from a stress model (Childre and Rozman, 2005).
2.7 Interaction in the ‘Black Rose Trick’
The model is now more complex, and before I develop it further I would
like to outline how I used it as a research experience in the ‘Black Rose
Trick’. As previously mentioned, through the materiality in space, interior

and things as well as in intention, the show intends to create a ‘bleak’
atmosphere mixed with fear, an atmosphere that can play a part in pro-
voking the guests’ ego reactions in interactions with the performers.
Through these interactions the audience have the possibility of becoming
conscious of the Ego roulette game and experimenting with themselves in
interaction with the characters. These interactions may be significant for an
identity-creating process in the direction of Jolly Chor(a).
I am present as an experience researcher and observe an interaction that
can illustrate the application of the Ego Roulette and the development
process to Jolly Chor(a). The owner of the hotel, Miss Rose (Signa
Sørensen) drapes herself in an erotically challenging position in the double
bed: she is sleeping with the general, but he is not present in the bed or the
space right now. The audience are sitting and standing around the bed.
Erotically seductive, with strongly melancholic charisma, she ‘bewitches’
her audience while she relates her tale of woe. She does not know her
mother: her mother took her to an orphanage as a baby. And if she demon-
strated sorrow at the orphanage, the adults said: ‘You should be happy that
your mother had the strength to bring you to our orphanage.’ A small
reflection on my part: is this fiction or reality? And then an interaction with
a guest, where Signa Sørensen’s character’s move is to say: ‘Every time I see
a woman who is the same age as my mother – it could be you’, looking
intensely with her strongly seductive and melancholy eyes at a woman in
her 50s. I think: ‘Could you be my mother?’
This moment of tension was of great significance for this woman (let us
call her Eva). In dialogue with me she said that, some time after the show,
she came into contact with the child within her – the child that looked out
behind her mother’s smile, saw the darkness and the look she perceived as
blame. There’s something wrong with me – it’s my fault that mother is sad.
Thus an important childhood project for her was to make mother happy
(please/manipulate), not express her own needs and conceal her own
sadness. The most exhausting aspect was that she continued these tense
interactions into her further life, in deep, loving relationships with men and
in relations with her female friends. Over time the experience became
important for her, a life-expanding, identity-creating process in the direc-
tion of Jolly Chor(a), but the evening she left the hotel the dominant
feeling was of loneliness and abandonment.
At a theatre seminar with Signa Sørensen I tested whether her
Performance Theatre Installation and the intentions behind it could be
understood on the basis of my theoretically-based reference point and my
models, and she answered in the affirmative. The model can, moreover, be
used in designing characters in a Performance Theatre Installation. In brief,
it is just a matter of jumping from the above-mentioned ego reactions to

types. Apart from reactions, the Enneagram operates with types/characters
who are characterized by the person’s fundamental conflict associated with
one of the nine ego reactions.
2.8 Kairos and Coherence
One perspective on the development from the Ego Roulette game to Jolly
Chor(a) (Figure 10.3) could be to regard existence as successive states of
tension between performers and participating audiences with particularly
emotionally intense moments. Kairos can be very important for an Identity-
Creating Process where more sustainable states of appreciation, joy and
happiness can be achieved: that which is called Coherence as a psycho-
physiological state.
Viewing existence in a perspective of tension may be illustrated by the
following quotation:
In order to understand the idea that we make our bodies by the way we live, it is
necessary to understand the basic life process of excitement, and how we shape
it. The body is a river of events and images, the stream of our goings on – our
thinking, feeling, action, desiring, imagining, a current of mortality. This current
of tissue metabolism which constantly shapes and reshapes itself as our bodies
Kairos
Coherence
Identity-creating process
Figure 10.3 Coherence: identity creating process

we call excitement . . . How we choose to let our excitement expand and grow,
how we choose to express or not express it, reveals us. (Keleman, 1979, p. 29)
The specially intense, tense present moment that Eva experiences in the
interaction in the ‘Black Rose Trick’ I call Kairos. This is a biblical time
concept in which there is a close connection between time and opportunity.
The favourable moments, Kairos, must be exploited. They contain a gift
(and a task) for human beings, an opportunity for action. But opportuni-
ties can be wasted.
American psychologist Daniel Stern employs the concept of Kairos
about the present moment in the relation between therapist and client, and
in an interview he underlines the important point that what happens in the
present can change our remembered past (Christiansen, 2005).
In continuation of this tension perspective, I shall create a bodily, mate-
rially embedded, reference point and objective for the work of construct-
ing experiences on the basis of an intention to contribute to human
development with life-expanding movement in Jolly Chor(a). The concept
of psycho-physiological Coherence is relevant and useful for this purpose.
This concept was developed at the Institute of HeartMath in California
(www.heartmath.org.).
At the physiological level, this mode is characterized by increased efficiency and

harmony in the activity and interactions of the body’s system: increased syn-
chronization between the two branches of the autonomic nervous system, a shift
in autonomic balance towards increased parasympathetic activity, increased
heart–brain synchronization, increased vascular resonance, and entrainment
between diverse physiological oscillatory systems.
Psychologically, this mode is linked with a notable reduction in internal
mental dialogue, reduced perceptions of stress, increased emotional balance,
and enhanced mental clarity, intuitive discernment and cognitive performance.
(McCraty, 2005, p. 16)
Reading the state of the heart can provide insight into this state of coher-
ence. When we speak of heartbeat, we often operate with an average figure,
the pulse: the number of times the heart beats in a minute. But the time
interval between each heartbeat varies; this is called heart rate variability
or heart rhythm. It is interesting to observe the pattern in the heart rhythm.
Research shows that, when negative emotions are experienced, e.g.
anger or frustration, a chaotic, incoherent pattern appears, while the
pattern is harmonious, wave-shaped and coherent when positive emotions
such as praise and appreciation are experienced. Studies have shown
that sustained positive emotions bring about a distinct mode of function-
ing: psycho-physiological coherence (Childre and Rozman, 2005). It has
also been demonstrated in studies that persons at a distance of up to
Frustration
90
Heart rate 80
70
60
60 120 180
Time (Seconds)
Appreciation
90
Heart rate
80
70
60
60 120 180
Time (Seconds)
Figure 10.4 Heart rhythm pattern
1.5 metres exert mutual influence through the electromagnetic field

(McCraty, 2004).
A reading of the heart rhythm and pattern is a direct reflection of the
activity in the autonomous nervous system, which regulates the functions
of almost all our organs and is involved in emotional reactions. Compare
the illustration in Figure 10.4 of heart rhythm patterns.
2.9 Ethics, Interaction Innovation
The theoretically-based reference point, ‘Space–Spirit Interaction’, including

models, has now been developed, with the exception of theory concerning the
identity process. At the same time the application potential of the reference
point has been demonstrated by means of examples from an experience
research of a Performance Theatre Installation, the ‘Black Rose Trick’.
To commence the development of an identity theory, I shall take a point
of departure in the challenges that emerged in my attempt to illustrate the
question raised in the introduction to this chapter. Is it possible to create
interaction between, on the one hand, innovation on the basis of financial
interest, and, on the other hand, human interest: human development and
community? The short answer is an immediate YES, which I shall sub-
stantiate in more detail. There was a great inflow from a paying audience
to the ‘Black Rose Trick’, and even though the engagement and experiences
of the individual members of the participating audiences were very
different, there are possibilities of experiences that can be important for an

individual human development process. An ad hoc community was also
created which took on great significance for the performers, both profes-
sionals and amateurs, and for some of the guests who stayed and spent the
night at the hotel, or repeatedly returned to the hotel.
The ethical aspect, however, poses some serious problems. Signa
Sørensen’s intention is for the individual to enter into a search process: to
be seduced, challenged, individually subjective. Lose oneself – find oneself.
This can be too violent and painful a process for the individual to under-
take alone after leaving the ‘Hotel’. Signa Sørensen is very responsibly con-
cerned with this ethical aspect in her artistic work.
2.10 Identity-creating Process
With a starting point in the theme of lose oneself – find oneself, I shall
describe Almaas’s theory of identity creation, the process that can lead us
from EgoRoulette to Jolly Chor(a). Almaas’s work is based on integrating
the schools of wisdom of the East with the best of western psychology.
For Almaas, finding oneself is to phase out ego reactions and achieve the
consciousness of unity, where the person feels connected with something
bigger than him/herself. Strength, love, joy, peace, sympathy and presence
are aspects of this state of unity. Almaas draws attention to the fact that it
can be difficult to understand his view of identity because it runs counter to
the usual Western understanding of identity, which is coloured by the idea
of the precedence of rationality as expressed, inter alia, in Descartes’
dictum: ‘I think, therefore I am’. For this reason, he takes his starting point
in descriptions of presence that are close to the experience of this unity expe-
rience as a directly experienced existential certainty (Almaas, 1998a, 1998b).
To take an example from a natural experience, Almaas makes it clear that
there is something else and more in the experience of presence than sharp-
ened awareness through the senses. Nature shows itself as more than the
things of which it consists:
A range of high, rocky mountain can then be felt as an immensity, a solidity, an

immovability, that is alive, that is there. This immensity and immovability seems
sometimes to confront us, to affect us, not as an inanimate object but as a clear
and pure presence. It seems to contact us, to touch us. And if we are open and
sensitive, we may participate in this immensity. We may then feel ourselves as one
with the immensity, the immovability, the vastness. (Almaas, 1998a, p. 5)
The presence does not have to be individual, Almaas stresses. The example
is a woman giving birth whose presence is unmistakable, beautiful and
powerful:
The experience of presence in this situation may be seen, if one is sensitive and
aware, not to reside only in the mother. If all present are fully participating – and
this often happens in such situations because of their dramatic intensity – then
the presence is seen to pervade the room, to fill it and impregnate it. There is an
intensity in the room, a palpable aliveness, the sense of a living presence.
(Almaas, 1998a, p. 4)
Through these experiences of presence Almaas arrives at a more precise

determination of presence: ‘I am present’ is a self-awareness where what is
real in me come to the fore. It is the conscious experience of I exist, I am.
The experience of ‘I am present’ is the closest we can come to understand-
ing the meaning of the direct experience of existence. The state is described
in the following way, inter alia: the experience of ‘I am’ does not have the
‘I’ as a kind of director who stages their existence. ‘I’ and ‘am’ are not sep-
arated. ‘I am’ is an experience of a unity. ‘I’ is the real thing.
Many people would probably be prepared to pay for experiences that
provide an opportunity for finding oneself, this state of unity with the
aspects of strength, love, joy, peace, sympathy and presence. But finding
oneself is inseparable from losing oneself, and this is painful. The nine ego
reactions are a protection against feeling the pain. They are based on pain,
so that the process of letting go is associated with an experience of empti-
ness. This is a universal phenomenon. Almaas provides an understanding
of this emptiness by means of theoretical insight into the early mother–
child relationship. In the first symbiotic phase with the mother, the child is
not conscious of itself and the mother as two separate individuals; they are
a double unit. Therefore, already at the beginning of the creation of the ego,
the impression arises that this dual unit is the essence of the merged exis-
tence: love.
Almaas emphasizes that this primitive impression in the child is wrong.
In reality the child experiences the merging aspect of the essence without
knowing that he or she is the merged love. This has the following conse-
quences. When the child experiences frustration in his/her relation to the
mother, for example rejection by her, the state of merged existence disap-
pears. The child loses a part of him/herself but believes that the part lost is
the mother. He/she can try to repair this vacuum throughout the rest of
their life, for example through love relationships in adulthood, because of
his/her belief that what is missing is the other, because that is what the child
could perceive when the original loss took place.
2.11 The Longing to Belong
With this fully developed ‘Space–Spirit Interaction’ model as a reference

point, I shall now proceed to research the challenge. Is it possible to
discover new potentialities for interaction between an innovative financial

interest and the human development of communities?
I have now entered into dialogue with Thomas Martinsen, the former
director of the Centre for Creative Industries Economy in a firm of con-
sultants, and now managing director of ‘Bygningskultur Danmark’ and co-
author of ‘Følelsesfabrikken. Oplevelsesøkonomi’ (The feeling factory.
Creative industries economy – in Danish) (Lund et al., 2005). I visually
develop the model’s positions in order to facilitate dialogue.
Martinsen outlines a development within the creative industries
economy. There was a first phase where the focus was on identity creation
and experience through the purchase of commodities, and a second phase
focusing on events, and the focus is now on identity creation with a point
of departure in many people’s experience of emptiness, loss and a longing
to belong. For Thomas Martinsen, the key question viewed from the cre-
ative industries perspective is: ‘How can the longing to belong become a
money spinner?’
Earlier (phase 2), the industry was concerned with producing events, and
this seems a little plastic. One could create identity by buying and retelling
experiences: experiences that were unique events – and the bigger, faster
and more and more, the greater the experience. This was the mantra in the
‘early’ creative industries economy. It was about experiencing something
that others had not experienced, a series of experiences exclusive in nature
that one could tell about.
The two most important parameters in current creative industry
economy projects about the longing to belong are being part of a commu-
nity and being creative; in a joint destiny, having influence and being co-
producer of the experiences.
One of the big investments is the cultural heritage (or copies of it) as the
living centre of these projects: let the history of the place unfold in a story
that can give people identity and connectedness. Dwelling, occupation and
tourism are to be created as a whole with domesticity, a place with fertile
soil for experiences that many feel are secure, good, nice and fun! One fre-
quently debated example named by Martinsen is Jakriborg, in Sweden,
where a faithful copy of a medieval town has been built and where modern
people live. Such copies of historical sites and cities are now emerging all
over Europe.
In Denmark, there is talk of focusing on a new life for villages around a
manor house. Families are to live there and attractive businesses can be
found in the old farm buildings. There are as many as 500 employees under
consideration. The history of the place, the story of the manor house and
idyllic village life, are to be identity creating in the domesticity that the
inhabitants are now to create together.
Martinsen concludes that, in reality, this may be a project with a limited

life for people who are investing in this belonging in a village environment.
They may also be a type of settlement tourists who can afford to be in a
‘a state of pioneer excitement’ in building up the settlement around the cul-
tural heritage as the living centre for a period of time and afterwards go on
to a new dwelling project.
In the capital city, Copenhagen, there are plans afoot to create cohesion
between dwelling, occupation and tourism on the old Carlsberg site.
Furthermore, in the outer reaches of Nørrebro, with a great diversity of
population groups, a new film city may arise with ethnic minorities as pro-
ducers. Martinsen considers that it is important to avoid the trap that parts
of Copenhagen have fallen into, such as the development of Vesterbro,
which originally was a working class district: a Café Latte culture with no
regard for the history and stories.
However, in Martinsen’s opinion, a creative environment is beginning to
arise in the old meat market at Halmtorvet in Vesterbro. It is something of
an underground environment, where at a later date the creative develop-
ments, among other things, can be commercialized. But before things get
that far it can be identity creating both for those who together produce the
experiences, and for an affluent middle class to have made an effort to find
the events and be able to tell their uninitiated friends and acquaintances
about them.
2.12 Mixed Art in the Meat Market
Two students in a project group at Performance-Design, Roskilde

University, are working in the Meat Market where there is an opportunity
for cooperation on experiences production. They have taken the initiative
to, and are responsible for, a group of artists and craftsmen creating several
connected installation spaces and an installation lounge at the Vesterbro
Festival 2006 (Hansen et al., 2006).
In this connection the position of ‘Space–Spirit Interaction’ can be used
as a contribution to a joint articulation of intentions and ideas in the design
process – and in interaction with the present author as project supervisor.
One example that can be mentioned is the dialogue concerning the atmos-
phere, for which it could be desirable to create the conditions in different
spaces, and how identity can be understood. Following a dialogue with me,
one of the students, Sine Høffding, has written this summary:
The Meat Market originally covered a large area with stables with storage spaces
for cattle that were to be slaughtered for later consumption – i.e. caging and slaugh-
tering of animals. In principle, it could have been other beings – people, whose
liberty had been taken away from them. It is the intention to experiment with aes-
thetic sense stimuli in these spaces – to create a challenging gift for a person’s
natural curiosity. Here is just a selection of space and sense bombardment.
It was possible to experiment with identity. There was a web cam with 10 com-
puter screens in the entrance. The camera took a picture every 12 seconds and
people did not know when they had been fixated – concentration rose.
Participants began to play with movements and innovative positions to give new
life to the picture. The picture shown had layer upon layer of the earlier fixations
and was a colourful contour marked by computer-created effects.
Another space, tiled and formerly used for slaughtering, was inspired by the
reality outside of the cowsheds, an area used by drug addicts in which to fix. An
artist designed the installation called ‘life after death and the desire for drugs’.
It is floating yet suffocating – white material, transparent textiles, dolls with a
touch of childhood as well as strange beings, operation tables and slightly per-
fumed smoke. A long, blue plush swing attracted many people – a calming and
comforting action – hanging in two sets of chains to bear the burden of human
decay and a dangerous game with drugs.
The lounge – a space in which to sit and rest one’s legs. On the surface pleas-
ant and home-like. But the history of the space adds another dimension to the
atmosphere of an ambivalent and almost threatening nature. The interior of the
space was built of heavy timber and stable doors that barricaded the natural
development potential of animals. The installation was constructed as a thick,
immovable spider’s web decorated with red carpeting on some of the seating
plateaus. The red carpet runs through all the rooms like a bloody track, but it
could just as well be an exclusive reception of guests and visitors.
It was a multi-experience for the senses that also included sound art and
video/visuals. The performers experimented with sounds from old reel-to-reel
tape recorders and also electronic equipment with unpredictable shifts from a
gloomy, trance-like sound universe to the sounds of hard-hitting drum and
bass. Computer-visuals were projected onto the walls and lit up, in interaction
with the music. An improvisation process depending inter alia on conscious
and unconscious reading of dancing, sitting, lying bodies – movements and
atmosphere.
It was a space with sensory stimuli that hit straight home. A performance
that points to the challenge of incorporating spaces in an electromagnetic
perspective – not merely around the heart but also the way in which sound
waves affect the electromagnetic field of cells. With their +/ tension, reg-
ulated by the sodium pump in the human body, among other things, the
cells have natural frequency fluctuations that can be influenced by sound
waves within the same frequency area as that of the cell (Jensen, 2005).
2.13 From Underground to Business
On the basis of my research process among creators and participants, the

CrossArt project at the Vesterbro Festival can be assessed as a successful
realization of the intention of possibilities for identity-creating processes in
communities. The interesting question is whether this intention can be
maintained and realized if this subculture project is to inspire innovative

projects on the basis of financial interest.
The festival was created through voluntary labour and government
support. State support is an important element in cultural life in Denmark
within all genres. Public funds are likewise available to entrepreneurs. From
the 1960s to the 1990s there was less interest in Denmark in running the risk
of being an entrepreneur than the politicians would have liked. This should
be seen in the light of the fact that a person who was permanently employed
in the public sector with a good salary had favourable conditions for cre-
ative and innovative development. At the moment politicians in Denmark
are devoting more resources to industries concerned with production of
experiences in a multitude of different contexts, inter alia with a focus on
support for entrepreneurs.
A multiplicity of experience spaces are needed, for example like the one
created at the Vesterbro Festival. One of the reasons for these spaces is that
the basis for the family is fragile and communities in working life are shaky.
In the companies, management buy many services in the experiences/creative
industries in order to get the workers who are individualized to interpret
unreasonable work pressure positively: make the exploitation mechanisms
more subtle: create ‘sugar coating’ (Christrup, 2002, 2004, 2006).
In his work entitled ‘Ich und Du’ (1923), the Austrian–Jewish philoso-
pher Martin Buber writes: ‘die wahre Gemeinde entsteht nicht dadurch,
dass Leute Gefühle füreinander haben (wiewohl freilich auch nicht ohne
das), sondern durch diese zwei Dinge: dass sie alle zu einer lebendigen Mitte
in lebendig gegenseitiger Beziehung stehen und dass sie untereinander in
lebendig gegenseitiger Beziehung stehen’ (Buber, 1977, p. 56). My transla-
tion of this quote: ‘the true community does not arise because people have
feelings for each other (nor without), but because of these two things: they
all stand in a mutual living relation with a living middle, and they stand in
a living mutual relation with each other’.
If the innovative financial interest is to be realized, this does not only
require focus on developing concepts for constructing the living centre, but
also focus on creative interaction between the competences of profession-
als in economics, branding and process facilitation. This interaction is very
important if the vision of young people with roots in creative subcultures
is to make experience production their trade and manage the commercial-
ization of this process.
I developed a reference point in order to ‘Manag[e] the multifaceted,
chaotic and uncontrollable.’ In the Meat Market project the need for such
a position became clear. There is no one person who decides. All the co-
creators are on board with their individual qualifications, and it is vital that
everyone can vouch for the expression that is shown and that they have a
feeling of having fashioned that work together, beyond the borderline of

their individual basis and thinking. This process is often turbulent; ideas
are worked up on the spot and it is difficult to find a period of time where
all the involved parties can be present.
3 MANAGING THE MULTIFACETED, CHAOTIC

AND UNCONTROLLABLE
3.1 Performers and other Professionals
As we have seen in the project at the Vesterbro Festival, the boundaries

between being organizer, designer, constructer and performer can be fluid.
Performance may be regarded as a game with the performers’ and the par-
ticipants’ state of consciousness: an interaction based on a performer’s
intention and double consciousness in which the performer should be able
to move freely on levels and content of consciousness in his/her interaction
to influence the experience potential of the participants. The interaction is
in focus: ‘The context of every reception makes each instance different.
Even though every “thing” is exactly the same, each event in which the
“thing” participates is different. In other words, the uniqueness of an event
is not in its materiality but in its interactivity’ (Schechner, 2003, p. 23).
A borderline between a performer and a person who designs and con-
structs experiences could be the level of consciousness intended in the work
process and the levels of consciousness the professional controls being able
to enter and exist in. On the basis of this perspective, inter alia, I shall
attempt to create a theoretically based point of reference including models
and tools that can be applied in a multitude of contexts.
3.2 Communication and Body
On the basis of their research on the development of Coherence,

researchers at the HeartMath Institute in California make the following
suggestion: ‘When one is in a physiologically coherent mode, one exhibits
greater sensitivity in registering the electromagnetic signals and informa-
tion patterns encoded in the fields radiated by hearts of other people’
(McCraty, 2005, p. 17).
From a professional interaction perspective, it is important to focus on
the significance this has for handling concrete processes.
At first glance these data may be mistakenly interpreted as suggesting that we

are more vulnerable to the potential negative influence of incoherent patterns
radiated by those around us. In fact, the opposite is true, because when people
are able to maintain the physiological coherence mode, they are more internally
stable and thus less vulnerable to being negatively affected by the fields emanat-
ing from others. It appears that it is the increased internal stability and coher-
ence that allows for the increased sensitivity to emerge. (McCraty, 2004,
pp. 555–6)
A ‘Freeze Framer’ programme developed by the Institute of HeartMath

can be used to train people to get into a state of coherence. By means of a
sensor on a finger, the person is linked to a computer showing the heart
rhythm and the pattern in this rhythm: Coherence or Chaos. Some specific
exercises involving breathing and changes in emotional state have been
developed for the Freeze Framer system, and studies have been undertaken
with music that promotes a state of coherent heart rhythm and mental
clarity (Childre and Rozman, 2005; McCraty et al., 1998). Other research
on how music influences us emotionally can also be included in the exper-
iments (Roepstorff and Gjedde, 2003). In this state of coherence the pro-
fessional is better able in other ways also to perceive people’s emotions and
the atmosphere in a space (direct body reading), both when the idea is to
be created and process managed, and also in the direct contact in the per-
formative space. Kelly and Littman’s book, The Art of Innovation, tells
about a woman, Jane, a seer: ‘Jane’s work is a mixture of hyper observation
and synthesis . . . Jane tries to get under people’s skin to figure out what
they think and do, as well as why’ (Kelly and Littman, 2004, p. 38).
We constantly read bodies and faces, consciously or unconsciously; even
if the person tries to hide a feeling, it may already have influenced the other
because 2/10 seconds elapse from the moment the emotion can be read on
the body to when the person may become conscious of it and can find a
suitable expression (Vedfelt, 2000).
This body reading can be a reference point for the ability to under-
stand/empathize with a person’s bodily emotional state through imitation:
to mimic people’s gestures and movements in order to feel from the inside
the emotional state expressed by the movement (Chodorow, 1991). Lis
Engel has developed an experience analysis that finds a point of departure
in this imitation of movements, where she operates with a scenic under-
standing of the interactions in a space, inter alia illustrated through an
analysis of Hip Hop (Engel, 2001).
3.3 The Ego Roulette
The ideal would be that, as a professional, one was still in a process of

development so that one actually has processed/worked off the nine ego
reactions, developed an inner flexibility and freedom that permits one to
master complex situations under pressure. Reality is not like that for most
of us.
Stress research has identifies four phenomena that most people experi-
ence as pressure: the field is unclear, actions are absent, contradictory com-
munication and pressure of time (Mirdal, 1993). It is probably impossible
to control a process so as to avoid these types of pressure. It is, therefore,
important for professionals to be aware of and to work with their own reac-
tions under pressure. They must also develop the competence to facilitate
processes so as not to invite the Ego Roulette game, and, when there are
moves with ego reactions, to handle the situation competently so that it
does not give rise to destructive interactions, that is, the Ego roulette starts
spinning. For use in experiments with the Ego roulette, I have developed
some exercises with music and drawing which, inter alia, can show a
person’s reaction when he/she is suddenly interrupted in his/her progress
during Jolly Chor(a) (Christrup, 1995, 1999, 2001).
3.4 Communication Compass
This is a compass that can be used both to understand oneself as a person

and the differences between people that may be important in a communica-
tion process. The Compass was originally developed by Jung in the 1920s, as
a psychic compass (Jung, 1979). In Figure 10.5 he distinguishes between four
psychic functions: the perceiving – sensing and intuition, and the judging –
feeling and thinking, as well as the two attitudes: introvert and extrovert.
One of the functions gives consciousness its direction in the here and now,
for example sensing with the attention focused on concrete sensory stimuli in
the outer world, while the other functions work in the consciousness or
unconsciousness. The aim of a development process is the deep inner
flexibility to ‘turn’ the compass and to accommodate a higher degree of com-
plexity of interaction between the functions in the consciousness. This is
thinking
sensing intuition
feeling
Figure 10.5 Psychic functions

competence corresponding to the one pointed to by Donald A. Schön as being

important for a professional, reflective practitioner. By means of experiments,
the reflective practitioner can train the gaining of insight concerning his/her
customary ‘compass direction’ and try out new rotations (Christrup, 1993;
Schön, 1983). Experiments can also be carried out with group processes, such
as how the compass can be used to manage meetings where the aim is to facil-
itate a creative process. When used in this way, the compass is similar in very
many ways to Edward De Bono’s ‘Six Thinking Hats’ (De Bono, 1995).
3.5 Project Management Paradigms
Many project management models and tools exist in which making a com-
petent choice can seem to be an independent science when the process in a
concrete performance project is to be handled. I shall attempt to create a
model that is universal, making it widely applicable.
My first choice for the development of the model (Figure 10.6) is a
‘classic’ reference point: the traditional aims–means project management
paradigm that operates with four fixed phases: see the text above the bold
line in the model. In the book entitled ‘Projektledelse i løst koblede syste-
mer’ (Project management in loosely linked systems) this project manage-
ment paradigm is reframed with a view to use in a complex, uncertain and
chaotic world: see the text under the bold line in the model (Christensen
and Kreiner, 2002).
I have had to create a new model especially, because the starting point of
the model for ‘Project management in loosely linked systems’ is a vision
that manages the project. In many experience production projects the
vision is created over time on the basis of experiences in interaction with,
for example, volunteers as actors, as seen in the project at the Vesterbro
Festival. My model (Figure 10.7) is extremely simple and can only be used
with the theory-inspired elaborations that follow.
I have made the choices selected into the major dimension in the model.
The ideas, actors and resources implicated in this choice and the action con-
Objective Planning Implementation Evaluation
Vision Plans as input Platform for pro- Usefulness/

tentative aim in processes under active management appreciation
development with uncovering of – progressive
possibilities and development
obstacles in the context
Figure 10.6 Project management paradigm

ideas......................................ideas................
choices...action...valuaction...choice...action...
actors...........................actors.........................
resources...........................resources..............
Figure 10.7 A simple model
nected with the choice can be inscribed in the model. ‘Valuaction’ then
follows: an evaluation and appreciation of action with a view to the further
development of ideas, involvement of actors, procurement of resources,
next action and so on.
We know from brain research that the emotions are involved in most of
the choices we make (Kringelbach, 2004; Damasio, 1994). It could be a
point that processes in some situations can be optimized if the participants
get contact with, accommodate and perhaps express the emotions that,
after all, to a high degree control important choices.
Against the background of a study of creative persons’ creative processes
(Mozart, Einstein and the rest), the psychologist Wallis has developed a
theory about the creative process and established the following four phases:
1. Preparation: consciously collected data in relation to a problem – state

of consciousness often marked by tension and confusion.
2. Incubation: disengagement of conscious relating to the problem –
inner images are changed and reorganized in the unconscious.
3. Illumination: the solution or the inspiration comes spontaneously
from the unconscious – often at an unexpected moment or in an unex-
pected situation, accompanied by a feeling of inner certainty, joy and
happiness.
4. Verification or revision: the person works on details and allows his/her
ideas to find expression in a form /structure. This phase requires effort
and skills and, like the first phase, is a largely conscious process
(Samuels and Samuels, 1982).
It is a huge challenge to manage projects involving many actors and often

changing over time when we know that the incubation time for the indi-
vidual can be important (see phase 2). And the illumination or inspiration
often comes from the unconscious at an unexpected moment or in an unex-
pected situation (see phase 3), often when we are in bed, just before we fall
asleep or when we wake up, or in the shower. This is probably because, in
these situations, we close off the outside world and find ourselves at a
favourable level of consciousness – a borderland: the Alpha state.
3.6 States of Consciousness in Performative Processes
Levels of consciousness are traditionally linked with brainwave activity,

where the wave frequency, that is, where fast waves, are measured in Hertz
that can vary from 0.5 to 42 Hertz, as Table 10.1 shows. Alpha waves are in
8–13 Hertz frequency. A state of consciousness dominated by Alpha waves
is characterized by relaxed, concentrated attention without thoughts.
Alpha is the gateway between the inner and the outer world – and between
the conscious and the unconscious. Entering an Alpha state and bringing
others into it can be an important competence for process facilitators when
ideas are to be produced.
For performers, with inspiration from foreign cultures, the focus has been
on more extreme states of consciousness. In the low frequency area, we see
in the column under Theta: Trance which means ‘being outside of oneself’.
Table 10.1 Brainwaves: frequencies and functions
UNCONSCIOUS CONSCIOUS
Delta Theta Alpha Beta Gamma
0.5–4 Hz 4–8 Hz 8–13 Hz 13–25 Hz 25–42 Hz
Instinct Emotion Consciousness Thought Will
Survival Drives Awareness of the Perception Extreme
Deep sleep Emotions body Concentration focus
Coma Trance Mental activity
Dreams Integration of Energy
emotions
Ecstasy
Source: http://www.newbrainnewworld.com/?Brainwaves_and_Brain_Mapping
A changed perception of reality and of self-perception is typical of the

trance. When a shaman controls the trance, it is emphasized that he must
be in control because the border between the shaman’s behaviour and
madness is razor-sharp (Jakobsen, 2001). It is challenging to research the
levels of consciousness the actors really achieve, when they are co-creators
of a space that potentially gives the possibility of lighter states of trance,
such as the Lounge at the Vesterbro Festival.
It is relevant to examine yet another level of consciousness in the perspec-
tive of professional experience construction: gamma waves characterized by
high frequency. The higher the frequency of the brainwaves, the greater is the
synchronicity between the neurons of the brain, all of which generate
impulses. The kundalini experience, among other things, can be placed on
the gamma level. The kundalini is the fundamental life energy originating at
the root of the spinal column. In some cultures kundalini energy is repre-
sented by a snake. At Knossos, in Crete, a figure of a snake goddess has been
uncovered during excavations: ‘She stands in her lovely skirt and she is beau-
tiful. Her breasts are bare, her eyes seem to be looking inward; she has both
arms raised, and in her hands she is holding two snakes that are very much
alive. She holds them with self-assurance, shows them as in a gesture, without
fear . . . she radiates sexuality and self-reliance, she knows the way of the
snake and she is deeply linked with it, masters it’ (Fasting, 1991, pp. 44–5).
In Buddhism, kundalini is associated with Green Tara, a woman who has
achieved enlightenment, a Buddha state. She is sitting with hands and feet in
a certain position that promotes the kundalini flow.
The state may be characterized as follows: ‘to awaken and stimulate con-
scious awareness on several levels at once and to open the flow of energy to
several channels simultaneously’ (Bruyere, 1994, p. 155). In earlier cultures
this state was associated with personal magnetism – an interesting link to
the most recent research about the heart’s electromagnetic field. Persons we
know who can dominate a space with their ‘animal’ energy, such as rock
stars, can be in contact with this kundalini energy.
But why not make this life-expanding movement from fundamental kun-
dalini energy into an intention in the training of professional experience
producers?
Most discussions of kundalini power include the mistaken idea that this power
is exclusive to a few people who have worked on themselves. Every athlete has to
use this power. Every actor. Every musician. Every artist has to use kundalini
power to keep himself fully conscious. The same is true for each one of us.
(Bruyere, 1994, p. 153)
From the fastest brainwaves, gamma, there is also an interesting link to my

Jolly Chor(a). Professor Richard Davidson, who works with affective
neuroscience, has discovered an exciting connection between a state of con-

sciousness and gamma waves in the prefrontal cortex. Eight of the Dalai
Lama’s monks experienced joy, happiness and empathy, in a state of deep
meditation, and the results of brain scans and EEG measurements revealed
high gamma wave activity, in particular in the left side of the prefrontal
cortex, which is now called the ‘Jolly Lobe’ (www.newbrainnewworld.com).
4 CONCLUSION
The excellent performer may be regarded as a person who, on the basis of

an intention in his or her interaction with a participating audience, can
improvise and spontaneously play with states of consciousness: conscious-
ness content, levels, functions and emotions on the basis of an inner
freedom where the fundamental life energy, kundalini, is part of the game.
It is neither possible nor necessary to define a sharp borderline between
‘competence to play’ in a performer and professionals who work with
design, construction and research into experiences.
The processes in performance can be characterized by there always exist-
ing the possibility of improvisation: inter alia with inspiration from inter-
action with the participants. There is improvisation even in a classical
concert, for example the cellist’s expression of feeling through the vibrato.
To inspire process facilitation in companies, for some years great interest
has been shown in understanding what takes places in performance with
artistic expression, from an interest in special forms of expression such as
Augosto Boal’s Forum Teater (Christrup, 1993) to the present focus on
improvisation and spontaneity (Shaw and Stacey, 2006). So, sharp borders
do not exist here, either.
In the perspective of consciousness, it is interesting that there is focus on
the same phenomenon both in theory concerning performance/performers
and in theory about other creative professionals’ practice: double con-
sciousness (Christrup, 2007). Donald A. Schön has analysed what profes-
sionals in different professions – landscape architect, therapist, organization
consultant, design architect, engineer – actually do when they are creative.
They possess double vision, dare trust their first, intuitive, holistic interpret-
ation of the situation – dare act on it – but are simultaneously open to
reflection regarding feedback in the situation; that is, reflection-in-action.
And the professional has a point of reference as a basis for reflection, for
example own values in relation to a possible solution (Schön, 1983). In his
critical analysis of performance theory, Marvin Carlson attempts to under-
stand a common feature in performance when he emphasizes Richard
Bauman’s focus on double consciousness:
All performance involves a consciousness of doubleness, through which the

actual execution of an action is placed in mental comparison with a potential,
an ideal, or remembered original model of that action. Normally this compar-
ison is made by an observer of that action – the theatre public, the school’s
teacher, the scientist – but the double consciousness, not the external observa-
tion, is what is most central. (Carlson, 1996, p. 5)
The theoretically-based reference point, ‘Managing the multifaceted,

chaotic and uncontrollable’ was created on the basis of the intention that,
with its simplicity and universality, it could contribute to creating inner cer-
tainty and clarity that facilitates a consciousness of doubleness, improvisa-
tion and spontaneity in a multitude of contexts that sometimes can be quite
complex and chaotic, inter alia with floating borders between competences
and work assignments for professionals, and also amateurs in some pro-
jects. The borderline is also fluid between the two positions. Some of
‘Space–Spirit Interaction’ has been recycled in ‘Managing the multifaceted,
chaotic and uncontrollable’.
This openness paves the way for many possibilities of application. A
current challenge is that experimenting with the research I have unfolded
here, with inspiration from organization and therapy research, neuro-
science and art, can give something back to the artists such as Signa
Sørensen who work with Performance in order to develop mutual inspira-
tion – not just about models and equipment and the body’s electromag-
netic fields, but also concerning inspiration from the schools of wisdom of
the East to break with the usual Western notion of the precedence of
reason. Supporting the success of innovation is another challenge. In expe-
rience production enterprises it will hardly be possible to fulfil the employ-
ees’ longing to belong: not many of the communities have a long life! But
the challenge can consist in accommodating the longing to find oneself.
Inner freedom in life-expanding movement in Jolly Chor(a), an Ego
Roulette-free zone with the possibility of developing a more sustainable
state of Coherence, in ad hoc communities. This may be the important
parameters of the future viewed in an innovation’s economic company per-
spective.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Illustrations: Sarukokoro, Mads Folmer
Translation: Margaret Malone
Dialogue concerning the text with my daughter Josephine Christrup and my colleague Hanne
Dankert
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11. Experience production by family
tourism providers
Ann Hartl and Malene Gram
1 INTRODUCTION
The production of leisure time or holiday experiences has been widely

influenced by the views of Pine and Gilmore (1999). Earlier research
(Gram’s work in cooperation with Andersen, Hartl and Therkelsen, from
2004 to 2006) showed that families have different preferences in the holiday
experiences they seek. Whilst the previous work mainly focused on the
decision-making process and how preferences translated into pictorial
expressions, for example for use in promotional material like brochures and
on the Internet, this chapter aims to reflect on how the findings from the
extensive research project translate into the production of experiences
through tourism providers.
Families comprise a unit, the members of which undoubtedly exert
influence on each other in terms of the choice of holiday destinations and
activities (for example, Thornton et al., 1997; McNeal, 1999; Gram and
Therkelsen, 2003; Hartl and Gram, 2006). In order to develop and market
tourism activities successfully to all members of the family, the ideas and
wishes of each member of the family group must be revealed. However,
little research has been published so far about what the individual members
of the family seek during their holidays and, in particular, there is seldom
a distinction made between children and adults’ needs, desires and wants.
Therefore, this chapter examines what the individual members of the family
identify as desirable holiday content and how these preferences are reflected
in their choice of preferred holiday pictures.
This chapter takes its point of departure in a review of the relevant lit-
erature in the area of experience production with a specific focus on holiday
destination and content decisions by all family members. It then turns to
examine the empirical results concerning desires relating to holiday con-
tents preferred by Danish and German families. And, finally, conclusions
based on these results are drawn concerning the implications for producers
and marketers of holidays.
232
Experience production by family tourism providers 233
Visual expressions are important both when remembering good holiday

experiences and when attempting to trigger choices of holiday destinations.
The chapter sheds light on what children and parents like and dream about
doing during their holidays, and how children’s views differ from other
family members’ in their particular holiday interests and their pictorial
expression. No attention is given to the extent of differences between gender
and cultural backgrounds in the research.
The research questions asked in this chapter are: (a) how did families’
views of ‘the good holiday experience’ translate into pictures? and (b) what
does this suggest for experience providers when staging holiday experiences
for families?
2 EXPERIENCE PRODUCTION
Since the late 1990s there has been a growing focus on experiences as an
added value to products being sold; in this context Pine and Gilmore (1998)
have coined the expression the ‘experience economy’. Whilst tourism
providers claim that they have been providing experiences for a long time,
the newly increased focus has initiated and enlarged interest in providing
for tourists by applying some of the principles promoted by Pine and
Gilmore. Pine and Gilmore (1998) state that an experience creates a mem-
orable event, thus increasing the possibility of obtaining repeat customers,
and at the same time increasing customers’ willingness to pay. Staging an
encounter where visitor and provider meet in a personal and memorable
way will further increase the businesses’ competitive position in the mar-
ketplace, thus placing the ‘optimal experience’ in the ‘sweet spot’ in the
model presented in Figure 11.1. In the sweet spot, a balance between pas-
sivity and activity is struck; the guest’s experience will be entertaining, edu-
cational and have its aesthetic and escapist elements. All senses, or at least
most of the senses, will be engaged through the experience.
However, according to Pine and Gilmore (1998), five design standards
drive the foundation of an impressive experience. Firstly, the provider needs
to work with a consistent theme that reverberates throughout the holiday
experience. Secondly, the theme should be encrusted with positive signals –
signs that are easy to understand and follow. Thirdly, negative distractions,
whether they are visual or aural, should be eliminated. Fourthly, the
provider should present the visitor with something to take home, a souvenir
to remember the experience by, thus adding to the tangibility of the intan-
gible experience. Finally, as already indicated, a winning experience engages
as many of the five senses of the visitor as possible; the better this is inte-
grated, the better the experience (achieving the sweet spot experience).
Absorption
Sweet spot
Entertainment Educational
Passive Active
participation participation
Aesthetic Escapist
Immersion
Source: adapted from Pine and Gilmore (1998).
Figure 11.1 Dimensions of experience production
Creating a place experience which should aim at staging a place that is

absorbing and entertaining, so as to enable visitors to immerse themselves
in the experience (Gilmore and Pine, 2002), can be either real or virtual, or
a combination of these.
Experiences, specifically within tourism, are not limited to what happens
during the actual encounter, but start prior to the actual meeting through the
building up of expectations, and memorable experience which will also
contribute to the visitors’ after-the-event experience of the encounter
(Mossberg, 2003). This means that the visitor or guest is emotionally
involved prior to the actual encounter with the experience. It either con-
tributes to the decision of where to go and what to do, or, to an even higher
degree, it enhances the complete holiday experience.
Some experiences discussed by visitors to a theme park are described as
hedonistic, rather than the purchase of a commercial service. That is,
they appeal to emotions rather than a utilitarian evaluation (Johns and
Gyimóthy, 2002). Johns and Gyimóthy also refer to visitor expectations as
an important point of reference to the mythological perception of the expe-
rience, thus confirming Mossberg’s point of view concerning the pre-visit
experience being part of the whole experience. Children have been noted to
have certain expectations about the experiences that they will have at a
certain theme park of which they have no previous experience, and this
is reflected in the evaluation of the experience. Especially ‘hands-on’
activities, that is, experiences on site and not prior to the visit (for example
via the Internet) are popular with the children (Haahti and Yavas, 2004).
There certainly is a need for information provision prior to the actual visit
to a destination and there needs to be coherence between the two, thus
embracing the fact that holiday experience does not exclusively take place at
the holiday destination (Nielsen, 2004; see also Leiper, 1990, 2000). A move
from the ‘Disney’ type of experiences to the ‘post-Disney experience’ has
been recorded (Nielsen, 2004). Whilst the Disney experience is characterized
by ‘a completely constructed environment, and a fundamentally prescribed
visitor experience’ (Borrie, 1999), the post-Disney experience focuses on the
vision of computer technology providing intelligent interfaces responding to
spoken or gestured desires of humans (ISTAG, 2001) together with a renewed
service paradigm (Morgan et al., 2002). It has also been demonstrated that
the integration of modern ICT services can provide the necessary integration
of the pre-visit and the visitor experience. However, as the results from our
investigation will show, there are no indications as to whether children or
parents who participated in the investigation actually would respond in a
positive manner to ICT-based offers prior to, and/or during, the trip.
2.1 Different Wishes about Holiday Content
Children’s view about the good holiday

Only a few investigations publish results on what children want in a holiday
context. From the little that we know, German children’s primary goal for their
holidays is to take part in activities (organized and unorganized) and to play,
to enjoy the sun, sand and water, meet other children, together with ‘the right
mix’ of relaxation and activities (TUC, 2000). Another study revealed that
Danish and German children want to relax, play, be with their parents and
take part in a number of activities, above all swimming (Gram, 2004). Other
studies based on experiences from an American gold-mining town (Nickerson
and Jurowski, 2000) showed that children enjoyed (and remembered) mostly
activities they could actively participate in (panning for gold, watching a play,
riding the stage coach, fishing in a pond). Nickerson and Jurowski state:
Walking, reading and looking at buildings may be ‘active’ for an adult, but tend
to become boring very quickly for children who need and want more stimula-
tion. (2000, p.27)
McNeal (1999, p.23) supports this:
Kids are not just mini-adults, [...] they are wired differently, act differently, talk
differently, see the world differently.
Nickerson and Jurowski also noted that children referred to ‘to shop’ as
a favourite activity in the gold mining cities, not necessarily for goods
relevant to the gold mining theme, but also goods such as baseball caps. An
exploratory study on school trips showed that children of 14–15 years of
age seek, above all, sociability with their classmates (Larsen and Jenssen,
2004). Another significant wish they report is participation in extreme
activities (rafting, climbing mountains and so on).
In another study, children aged 7 to 11 expressed their attitudes to travel
experiences and different holiday destinations by describing the perfect
holiday destination as a place which provides all the pleasures from home,
with extras and, particularly, good weather (Cullingford, 1995). Even
though children dream of ‘home and sun’, they tend to remember what
was different from home. Good beaches are vital ingredients in the chil-
dren’s description of holidays. Also, the children expressed the view that
‘big hotels and a great deal of entertainment are more attractive than
explorations of tropical rain forests’ (Cullingford, 1995, p. 123). Children
are not, as adults tend to be, burdened by cultural ideals about what one
ought to see and do while away on holiday. Cullingford also expresses the
opinion that a desirable destination for children is one which offers many
things to do, in a friendly, accommodating and rich environment (p. 124).
When comparing Belgian, French, British and Italian children’s influence
on trip decision making and how this links to their satisfaction with that
holiday, it turned out that a majority of children in all investigated countries
had played some part in the vacation decision. Of these, British children
were least likely and Italian children most likely to have been involved in the
vacation decision (Seaton and Tagg, 1995, p. 17). What the study does not
consider is differences in cultural perceptions of what is encompassed by the
concept of being involved in a decision. Seaton and Tagg conclude: ‘involv-
ing children in the vacation decision-making process improves the possibil-
ity of an optimum outcome’ (p. 18).
Parents’ view of the good holiday

In a survey of 1200 German and 800 Danish adults, the two main aims of
the family holiday are stated to be ‘that the family shares experiences’ and
‘that the children have fun’ (Gram, 2004). Additionally, ‘relaxation’ during
the holiday is important to all the respondents (Gram, 2004). The American
gold-mining town study portrays the holiday experience as a means to
‘reconnect as a family’ (Nickerson and Jurowski, 2001, p. 19).
In the qualitative study of German families on holidays in Demark
(TUC, 2000) German adults’ primary goal was rest and relaxation; nice
weather was also emphasized as an important factor; ‘the right mix’
between relaxation and activities (organized and self-organized), alongside
with time for each other, a child-friendly atmosphere, fun, nature, new
experiences, good food, attractive facilities, freedom and independence,
were mentioned as further holiday objectives.
Another study records that German parents maintain they want to rest
during their holiday, while wanting to have fun at the same time (Aderholt,
2003). Beach holidays are the preferred way of spending a family holiday
with children. Almost half of all holidays undertaken by families with chil-
dren include elements of the beach and water, whereas city breaks are far
less likely among families with children, compared to the population in
general. Further, German families put greater emphasis on having time for
each other, relaxing, being free and having fun, than the holidaymaking
German population in general. Also families are less interested in getting
to know new people, having contact with locals and experiencing some-
thing new, experiencing other countries and their culture (Aderholt, 2003)
than Germans on average.
Visitors to the Legoland theme park in Denmark, who were interviewed
in order to establish customer perceptions and satisfaction, expressed the
view that the park catered well for children’s needs, but left adults with a
feeling that they were babysitting (Johns and Gyimóthy, 2002). Some
parents felt they were sacrificing their holiday time in Legoland, because of
the lack of adult activities; others rationalized the visit to the theme park
by talking about compromise or vicarious gratification: when the kids are
happy, so are the parents. The parents in the study perceived the park as
secluded and therefore safe, and safety is considered important not least
because it gives the children an element of independence and parents space
from their children for a while. The authors conclude, however, that a
general conflict exists between children and adults’ agendas during holidays
(Johns and Gyimóthy, 2002, p. 325).
2.2 The Family as a Joint Decision-making Unit
Holiday decision making has long been considered as a joint decision-

making process between adults in the family, that is, husband and wife (e.g.
Davis and Rigaux, 1974; Belch et al., 1985; Belch and Willis, 2002). More
recent studies reveal that children also play a direct or indirect part in
family decision making (for example, Howard and Madrigal, 1990;
Lindstrom, 2003; Gram and Therkelsen, 2003).
Children might instigate purchases of any kind, rather than gather infor-
mation about choices, suggest where to buy, and become involved in the
final decision (Roedder John, 1999; Lindstrom, 2003). Depending on their
ages, the children employ further strategies such as bargaining, compro-
mising and persuasion and, from around the age of eight, requesting the
purchase of certain products with no specific argumentation turns into

discussions and compromises between parents and children (Rust, 1993).
The youngest of the children influence their parents’ decisions indirectly
by their mere existence and special needs, setting certain limits and
demands to what the family can or cannot do (as described, for example,
by Fodness, 1992, and Thornton et al., 1997). Older children have the most
influence on shopping items related to their own personal needs (such as
breakfast foods, toys and clothes), moderate influence on family activities
(for example holidays and restaurant selection) and the least influence on
the purchase of durable consumer goods and other expensive goods
(Roedder John, 1999). Within the latter categories, children exert the most
influence in the early stages of the decision-making process (recognition of
problem and information search) and less influence when the ultimate deci-
sions are being made. Lindstrom argues that children’s influence concerns
all product categories, and he stresses that children’s indirect influence is of
vast importance as well. Even when children are not present they exert
influence: ‘Parents have a basic desire to please their children. So, if they
know that their child favours X over Y, they’ll purchase X’ (Lindstrom,
2003, p. 251).
The situation of today’s children is substantially different than it once
was: more adults earn more money per child, because more mothers often
work outside the home; there are fewer children per family; the average age
of first-time parents has increased considerably and, therefore, parents have
often acquired greater wealth than they had a decade back (McNeal, 1999).
Moreover, McNeal mentions ‘the guilt factor’, which relates to the greater
amount of time parents spend at work and, consequently, the less time with
their children, so they are more inclined to buy more presents and to under-
take more activities with their children when they eventually spend time
together. McNeal concludes that children have never previously had more
money to spend and they have never initiated as many purchases as they do
today. Lindstrom writes: ‘It is not surprising that this generation has been
tagged the “age of compression”. [. . .] They’ve grown up faster, are more
connected, more direct and more informed. They have more personal
power, more money, influence and attention than any other generation
before them’ (2003, p. 1).
A change has clearly taken place from the period prior to the 1950s,
where the father was considered the family’s decision maker regarding any
spending, to a period where the mother acquired influence, at first as co-
decision maker and later, as she became educated and active in the labour
market, as the most dominant decision maker. Children have slowly entered
the unit of decision making, and have for quite some time now been con-
sidered as influential in the purchase of child-related products as their
parents. The most recent research (McNeal, 1999; Lindstrom, 2003; Gram
and Therkelsen, 2003; Gram, 2004) shows that children have, to a much
greater extent, become part of the decision-making unit. Children are, not
always but potentially, involved in family purchases. The reason for this
development is that, on the one hand, children expect to be heard and there-
fore make demands, and that, on the other hand, time-constrained adults,
who strive to have democratic families, want to have happy and indepen-
dent children. Thus, it seems important to consider children as well as
parents in tourism marketing and through that to appeal to all actors in the
decision-making unit.
No doubt, children do influence purchases in the family, and parents are
not deaf to the wishes expressed by their children. Within tourism, it is
found that pleasing the child is an important motive for parents (Ryan,
1992; Johns and Gyimóthy, 2002). The satisfaction of children is rated
highly by parents and, if the child does not wish to go to a specific holiday
site, the likeliness of satisfied (read ‘happy’) children is poor (Thornton
et al., 1997). The influence of children is thus not just a simple one-way
process with a screaming child in a supermarket, but a two-way commu-
nicative and multifaceted process between the child and (at least at times)
an adult encouraging the child’s participation.
Studies have also found that children are perceived to have some direct
influence in the holiday decision-making process: especially German chil-
dren, as compared to Danish, and particularly in the inspiration-seeking
and final decision-making phases, were also found to have a strong indirect
influence on family decision making (Gram and Therkelsen, 2003; Gram,
2004).
2.3 Sub-conclusion
Summing up, today children are considered to be playing a key role in

family decision making. When it comes to holidays, children’s main aim is
to play and experience activities, whereas parents want to be with their chil-
dren and relax. Children remember and seek sensory experiences and expe-
riences where they were active and immersed. They do not hold ‘politically
correct’ ideals about what one ought to do during the holidays (for example,
see cultural sights or leave the hotel pool). Parents’ and children’s wishes for
the holiday may also coincide. All mention ‘the right mix’ of relaxation and
activities, but ideas about what ‘the right mix’ contains differ. Parents seek
togetherness but with room for rest. Togetherness should include fun, but
can also involve vicarious enjoyment, even though this risks causing frus-
tration. It is therefore interesting to investigate how these most recent
members of the family decision-making unit, the children, express their
preferences when it comes to choosing holiday pictures. Recommendations

for experience production within the experience economy focus on the-
matic experiences engaging all senses if possible, in order to create long-
lasting and memorable experiences and trigger repeat business. Holiday
experiences often start before the actual encounter at the destination, and
electronic information services are suggested as one mode of engaging the
visitor, prior, during (and possibly) after the visit. Therefore our investiga-
tion focused on what type of experiences families seek during their holidays
and what indications this might have for future experience production.
3 METHODOLOGY
The results of the study that are reported in this chapter are based on
a research project initiated by the coastal holiday alliance under
VisitDenmark. The project was a follow-up to a previous qualitative study
of Danes’ and Germans’ holiday expectations. For this study, a round-table
discussion group with nine German children (five girls and four boys, all
between 8 and 13 years of age) was carried out at a studio in Hamburg.
Additional to this, there was a follow-up postal survey of 200 German chil-
dren. Moreover, two round-table discussions were carried out with German
mothers and fathers, respectively. There was also a quantitative survey
(CATI) of German families, which was conducted concurrently with the
focus groups.
All participants in the round-table discussions were German, they were
selected from a general middle-class background, and were part of a family
with a minimum one child below the age of 12 years. None of the group
members were related to each other, so what happened during one group
discussion could not be discussed prior to the next discussion. Despite the
fact that the family group was split up during the round-table discussions,
it is important to remember that any gender-specific behaviour during the
adult group discussions needs to be put in the family context, as the female
participants were both wives and mothers and the male participants, hus-
bands and fathers.
The main purpose of the group meetings was to present a range of pic-
tures to the participants (children had 28 pictures to choose from, adults
48) and to select favourites representing good holiday experiences or desires
for future holidays. The children were asked to select just once between
three and five pictures, representing a good holiday experience, whereas the
adults went through six different tasks of selecting (or reselecting) pictures.
The pictures represented a mixture of photos already in use or intended for
use in tourism destination marketing of Denmark; this could be printed
material or virtual appearances on various websites advertising Denmark

as a tourism destination. There were pictures of nature and landscapes,
holiday homes, family situations and holiday activities on the beach and
elsewhere. In the reduced number of pictures for the children, care was
taken so as to ensure that all the same categories were represented.
Although one aim of the focus group was the testing of promotional
materials, the pictures were chosen as visual expressions of good holiday
experiences, and therefore the group discussions provided a method by
which to generate qualitative knowledge about preferences for experiences
through the pictures, and further provide a forum for linking argumenta-
tion to certain experiences and to ask the participants further questions
about these.
The selection of pictures for the discussion groups proved to be a difficult
task. It is not possible to predict which elements in a picture the informant
is going to react to and the sample of pictures was composed of already
existing pictures, as there was neither time nor opportunity to take new pic-
tures. The sample of pictures did, however, largely function as intended. All
three groups perceived the pictures as being very relevant. Only one picture
turned out to be a problem. In the previous study (Gram and Therkelsen,
2003), it was recognized that building sandcastles was a very relevant activ-
ity, especially for German fathers and children. Unfortunately, in the
picture archives, there was no picture showing a man building a sandcastle.
The best-fitting motif showed a man who built a sand sculpture of a full-
bosomed woman. During the round-tables, neither women nor men would
touch the picture; however there were asides that gave the impression that
a picture like this invited wrong connotations in relation to the topic of
family holidays. A sandcastle-and-father picture would without any doubt
have given different results. The children, in their round-table discussion,
on the contrary, liked the picture with the man and the sand-sculpture, and
in the postal survey the man with the sand sculpture was chosen by 10 per
cent of the boys and 8 per cent of the girls. For the children’s postal survey,
an additional picture was included: three girls with a sandcastle on the
beach. This turned out to be even more popular among the girls (chosen by
28 per cent of the girls: cf. picture no. 16 in Figure 11.2).
It is debated how viewers’ perception of images can be evaluated by
researchers. A picture says more than a thousand words, it is said, and it is
hard to judge the extent to which a viewer is able to express how he or she
perceives an image. Even the same reader can perceive the same picture
differently from reading to reading. However, asking people to select the
pictures they like the most and state what they like about these pictures
seems to be the closest one can get to their judgment of the pictures and the
experiences contained therein.
Figure 11.2 Pictures from the questionnaire

The postal survey was sent out to children aged 8 to 12 years whose
parental agreement had been gained during a telephone survey conducted
in the spring of 2004 on holiday preferences (Gram, 2004). It consisted of
eight questions on the front page regarding the children’s holiday wishes
and previous holiday experiences, as well as their involvement in the
holiday decisions, and the request to select three pictures out of 21 pic-
tures on the back of the form. (The question read: Below you see 21
pictures altogether. Choose the three pictures that illustrate the best
holiday to you. Write the numbers of your chosen pictures.) The children
were then also asked to give a reason for their choice of pictures. The 21
pictures were identical to pictures used during the round-table discussion
for children, except for nine pictures used in the round-table discussion
which were not included in the postal survey, and two new pictures (girls
with sandcastle, boy with kite), which were seen as more attractive alter-
natives for the children.
The study reported below is explorative and cannot be generalized for the
whole population of German children. However, the findings show very
consistent results and it is worth noting that the children have strong pref-
erences for a small number of pictures which appear to be very central to
the children. Findings, furthermore, are supported by what was found in
the literature review.
4 RESULTS
In the following, the results from the children’s round-table discussion and
the postal survey will be presented. The children’s most popular pictures
will be presented below. First, general features will be discussed, then the
two most popular pictures will be analysed, taking the point of departure
from the children’s comments. Hereafter gender and age-specific observa-
tions, to the extent that this is possible, will be reported and the results will
be compared with findings from the parents’ round-tables.
During the children’s round-table, they primarily chose pictures with
activities as well as sensory experiences. This is supported by the postal
survey. Unsurprisingly, for the age group 8 to 12 years, pictures should
preferably have a ‘cool’ appeal rather than being childish (a picture with a
boy waterskiing was considered cool; cf. picture no. 6) and pictures with
toddlers were not desirable. However, pictures illustrating togetherness
were also chosen. Interestingly, and slightly surprisingly, the children also
included the one picture showing a panoramic view of a stretch of coast-
line (see picture no. 3). Several children made up an exciting story especially
in relation to that picture.
Table 11.1 Chosen pictures’ popularity
Germany frequencies percentages

Photo no. girls boys girls (97) boys (103)
1 4 5 4 5
2 11 3 11 3
3 26 30 27 29
4 38 30 39 29
5 53 61 55 59
6 1 0 1 0
7 2 12 2 12
8 6 25 6 24
9 6 3 6 3
10 8 10 8 10
11 8 4 8 4
12 1 3 1 3
13 4 2 4 2
14 15 8 15 8
15 13 4 13 4
16 27 6 28 6
17 2 27 1 9
18 7 8 2 3
19 30 8 10 3
20 6 46 2 15
21 21 14 7 5
Total 289 309 298 300
The qualitative results were later verified in the postal survey. The results
are given in Table 11.1 and Table 11.2, where the qualitative explanations
for choosing the pictures are coded and quantified.
Table 11.1 above shows the popularity of the pictures from Figure 11.2
amongst the German boys and girls who responded to the postal ques-
tionnaire. As the children were only asked to select those three pictures they
liked the most and not to rate them, no weighting took place. Frequencies
therefore reflect the number of times a picture was chosen, either as number
one, two or three. Percentages have their base in the number of girls (97)
and boys (103) participating in the survey and therefore add up to more
than 100.
The most popular picture was picture no. 5 (showing a family in a fun
park canoe ride), whilst the least popular picture was picture no. 6 (two
little boys at a water post in front of a caravan). Other pictures that only a
Table 11.2 Explanations given for choice of promotional picture
I chose this picture because . . . Frequency Per cent

. . . the activity looks fun. 94 47
. . . I love theme parks. 78 39
. . . water and/or swimming is fun. 65 32
. . . it is close to the sea / on the beach. 53 27
. . . of the beautiful nature/landscape/view. 45 23
. . . there are animals in the picture. 32 16
. . . I would like to try this activity / go there. 27 14
. . . it looks exciting. 23 12
. . . the family is together. 23 12
. . . the activity looks nice. 22 11
. . . I love indoor swimming pools / water worlds. 22 11
. . . it is nice (appealing image). 17 9
. . . it brings back memories of previous holidays. 17 9
. . . I like outdoor life / nature. 15 8
. . . it shows sun, sand and sea. 11 6
. . . I like camping. 11 6
. . . I like being with friends. 10 5
. . . I like sailing / water sports. 11 5
. . . I like flying kites. 8 4
. . .I like sports. 5 3
. . . I like staying at this type of accommodation. 5 2
. . . I like good food. 5 2
Total 594 303
Note: Please note that these explanations are based on the respondents’ qualitative
statements and were quantified by the authors. Not all children gave just one explanation for
the pictures chosen, not all children chose three pictures.
few children (less than 5 per cent of both boys and girls) chose, were picture
no. 1 (view from an open window), picture no. 12 (picnic on the beach),
picture no. 13 (picnic in the meadow), and picture no. 18 (toddlers on the
beach with a pirate), all of which showed children that were rather younger
than the age group addressed in the survey.
In order to gain a broader insight into children’s choice of pictures and
holiday interests, as well as desires for certain experiences, the children
were – as mentioned previously – asked to select their three favourite
pictures, and explain their choices. Thus Table 11.2 combines the explana-
tions for all three pictures selected.
The most predominant explanation was that the activity looked fun, and
therefore was something the children liked to do during their holidays.
Some children distinguished between fun activities and nice-looking activ-

ities. Some children would say that they liked the picture, because they
liked what was in the picture, which probably is just a statement of the
obvious. However, as most of the pictures showed activities and children
of approximately the same age as the respondents, this is more a
confirmation of their identifying with the pictorial expression than being
a banality. In other words, it is evident from Table 11.2 that the most
important reason to select a picture was an element of fun, which the first,
second and third reasons refer to. It also became evident from the survey
that the element of water is of great importance to children when it comes
to which pictures they find appealing: whether this is in connection with
beach and sun, or an indoor swimming pool or water world, was without
significance, something that was of different importance to the parents, as
will be discussed below.
During the children’s group session, typical arguments for choosing a
motive were ‘I would like to try that, too’ (expressed, among others, by
Philip (12 years, no siblings): ‘I have never seen this before, looks great, I
would like to see that in real life’ as well as by Pia (9 years, with one younger
sister): ‘I would like to go camping with a group of girls.’ Another type of
reasoning was ‘I’ve tried that’, which indicates that the children identify with
the activity in the picture because of previous experience. It became evident
that, although the task was to find pictures related to holiday experiences
and desires, the children would also select images that related to what they
enjoyed in their leisure time. For example, as Lisa (9 years, no siblings) put
it with her first selection: ‘I like horse riding, in my free time, not just while
on holiday.’ Along the same line was Xenia (9 years, with an older sibling):
‘I love water, therefore we always go to the pools.’ They both relate to pre-
vious experiences, like Lenni (9 years, one younger sibling): ‘I always go
fishing with my mate during the summer hols, and catch crayfish, that’s great
fun.’ A third type of argument basically is that this or that definitely belongs
to the standard holiday contents; as Lukas (11 years, one out of four) says
about roller-skating: ‘That’s a must during the hols.’
The picture of a canoe from Legoland (picture no. 5) was the most
popular picture among the children (chosen by 59 per cent of the German
boys and 55 per cent of the German girls). This picture seems to symbol-
ize fun parks in general and inspires the children regarding what one can
do in any fun park. The importance of the sensory aspect is emphasized by
the children: ‘getting wet’, ‘that the ride is steep’. The picture represents a
fun activity for most of the children.
The arguments for choosing the Legoland picture given in the postal
survey were that it looks like fun (37 children), 27 children connected the
picture with fun parks, and 13 children emphasized that there is water. The
canoe picture becomes an icon of a fun park; it represents an activity full

of action, with water splashing and ‘that funny feeling’ in the stomach.
Another very popular picture among the boys and girls was the picture of
three girls in an indoor swimming pool (picture no. 4). The argument given
for choosing this picture was that one can go swimming, which seems to be
valued in itself. Water is also mentioned as very important for children in a
previous analysis (Gram and Therkelsen, 2003). The postal survey shows
that this picture is the second most popular among girls (chosen by 39 per
cent) and the fourth most popular picture by boys (chosen by 29 per cent).
In all, 48 children responding to the postal survey argued that they chose
the picture because it is about swimming. A further 13 children wrote that
the picture looks like fun. Clearly children want to swim. They have tried it
before and love it, but the social appeal of the three children in the picture
also plays a role, because several children interpret the situation in the
picture as representing cosiness and friendship.
The German boys are slightly more reluctant to choose the indoor swim-
ming pool picture, despite the joy of swimming. This might very well be
connected to the fact the picture shows three young girls. During the chil-
dren’s round-table, the children tended to select pictures showing children
of their own gender and age.
Girls tend to choose pictures with girls, and boys tend to choose pictures
with boys. Both boys and girls avoid pictures with very young children,
which are, on the contrary, considered ‘cute’ and ‘adorable’ by the parents
in the other round-table discussions.
A number of gender differences were found. Besides pictures of activ-
ities, the girls chose pictures expressing cosiness or images of sweetness.
Girls were further interested in pictures showing animals (together with
children). In particular, one picture, showing a horse surrounded by a
family group in front of a holiday home, is considered interesting by the
girls (picture no. 19). Also pictures with a group of girls are perceived as
relevant for girls (picture nos 15 and 16).
Boys tend to prefer wild activities; thus, for example, the water-skiing
picture was chosen as the second most popular picture among the German
boys (picture no. 20, chosen by 45 per cent). Also boys seem to prefer boys
as models (picture no. 17).
The findings concerning parents’ choices of holiday pictures are, as men-
tioned, only based on a single round-table discussion with each group.
However, a very interesting finding in this study is that mothers and fathers
never touched the pictures preferred by the children, when mothers and
fathers were asked spontaneously to pick out pictures which for them reflect
‘a good holiday’. This could be a very interesting topic for further study.
Mothers and fathers chose pictures reflecting peace and quiet, relaxation,
idyllic scenery and family togetherness, but indoor, chlorine-smelling swim-

ming pools and crowded fun parks do not seem to be part of their ideal
holiday vision. Parents chose the non-commercial-looking pictures.
Activities and fun are also elements of mothers’ and fathers’ picture
choices; however, this is not as prominent with the adults, especially not as
far as the mothers’ picture selection is concerned.
Summing up, it can be concluded that children prefer pictures showing
activity, preferably all absorbing and sensory experiences which, unprob-
lematically, can be commercial offers. Water and fun parks are crucial
elements. Children seek situations they can identify with. Boys identify pri-
marily with boys of their own age in the pictures, girls with girls, and boys
prefer wilder activities than girls, who also like more idyllic pictures with
flowers and animals. Some landscape pictures appeal to children as well.
Parents, on the other hand, choose pictures reflecting family togetherness
and pictures associating peace and relaxation (for example, landscapes and
having time). Adults show a tendency towards the simple joys of life (such
as sitting on a wooden boat bridge with one’s child) and seem to long for
pictures of non-staged experiences. For both adults and children, it was
apparent that holiday experiences linger and that memories of previous
holidays trigger expectations, wishes and desires for future holiday experi-
ences. A holiday experience starts with looking at holiday promotion in the
form of brochures and websites.
5 CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS
Recent research considers the child as part of the family decision-making

unit. Consequently, the fact that parents and children visualize the good
holiday in very different ways provides food for thought. The research ques-
tions asked for this study concerned examining how children’s ideas about
the good holiday translate into pictures and to what extent gender and age
play a role and what implications this has for the production of experiences.
In accordance with the findings of Nickerson and Jurowski (2000) and
Larsen and Jenssen (2004), children select pictures showing sensory experi-
ences and activities. In particular, water is seen to play an extraordinary role,
as do theme parks. Children seek fun and to be absorbed by activities.
Whether this happens on the beach or in a commercial playland does not seem
to be crucial. This is in line with what was found by Cullingford (1994) who
concludes that children do not consider political correctness in relation to
what to do and see while on holiday as being problematic; in the children’s eyes
it is quite okay to go to a commercially driven water world and enjoy it very
much. Thus, they are open to ‘staged’ experiences as advocated by Pine and
Gilmore (1999). Nevertheless, absorption does not necessarily include

involvement of all the senses for the kids, but the need for activity is prevalent.
The research carried out with adults regarding picture preferences was of
an exploratory nature, but findings fit what was found in the literature
review concerning adults’ vacation preferences. Thus, the implications are
considerable for the tourism industry. Parents were, in contrast to their chil-
dren, found to look for peace and relaxation, and this may very well contain
joint activities in the family but has to happen in a far more authentic way
than envisaged by the children.
The importance of age and gender found in the study was strong.
Boys prefer boys their own age, just as girls identify with girls their age.
Pictures with toddlers are not interesting for children between 9 and 12
years of age. Boys are more attracted to pictures showing wild activities,
whereas girls also like pictures with idyllic situations with animals and
flowers.
At least some of the pictures which parents find interesting and wonder-
ful as visualizations of the holidays are considered boring and irrelevant by
the children. The pictures which the children like are considered unappeal-
ing (commercial, artificial and not politically correct) and not part of
parents’ ideals for a holiday. Still children also play a role when the family
chooses where to go during the holiday. How can the tourism industry cope
with this ‘mission impossible’ in experience production?
Absorption
Sweet spot
Entertainment Educational
Passive Active
participation participation
Aesthetic Escapist
Parents Children
Immersion
Figure 11.3 Parents and children placed in Pine and Gilmore’s experience
dimension model
Implications for the tourism industry

It is evident from the above that families, especially when it comes to
tourism consumption, do not act as a homogeneous group. Different family
members have different preferences for holiday content. Obviously family
members might also vary in their preferences in regard to lifestyle segmen-
tation, but this was not part of the investigation. Nevertheless, the findings
of the project indicate strongly that tourism providers who cater for fam-
ilies need to consider the provision of elements that meet the different
family members’ interests and expectations when it comes to a good
holiday experience. In other words, tourist attractions need to address the
fact that children wish to be active to a higher degree than their parents, in
other words, for at least some activities, parents should be offered the
opportunity to watch their children being active rather than having to par-
ticipate in the activity themselves. For example, theme parks need to
provide activities that are safe for the children to participate in without con-
stant parental supervision and involvement.
On the other hand, tourism providers, who mainly cater for an adult audi-
ence but wish to attract families as well, need to provide activities for children,
while parents persue their immersion in the aesthetic. This trend has actually
been seen by several art galleries and museums, providing more hands-on
experiences for children than they used to, but could be explored further.
In conclusion, one can say that the tourism industry needs to readjust to
an ever more demanding audience and accept the fact that a family is not
just a family.
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Thornton, Paul, Gareth Shaw and Allan M. Williams (1997), ‘Tourist group
holiday decision-making and behaviour: the influence of children’, Tourism
Management, 18(5), 287–97.
Turismens Udviklingscenter (TUC) (2000), Den tyske udfordring. Analyseresultater og
anbefalinger [The German Challenge – Analysis Results and Recommendations].
Index
actor network theory (ANT) 157, core experience 96–7, 98
160–62, 164–5, 168–70, 174 experience concepts 94–6
Aderholf, P. 237 experience production system 85–6
Adria, Ferran 23–4 taxonomies 88–91
Æstetisk Råd 147 innovation
AGM 114–15, 124–7, 128, 129–30 as crucial business activity 102–3
A.I. Game 54 new ways of organization 106–7
Alexander, C. 45 strategic organization 103–6
Almaas, A.H. 209, 215–16 methodology and empirical basis
Alpha state 226 86–8
Andersen, Hans Christian 69 move from frontstage 96–8
ANT see actor network theory (ANT) strategic orientation 91–4
ARLA 19 taxonomies of production system
Arrow, K.J. 119 88–91
Art of Innovation (Kelly and Littman) total experience 98
222 Bager, T. 94
Artitide network 147–9 Bartle, R. 35
Asheim, B.T. 142 Basilica San Pietro 61, 67
Ateljevic, I. 139, 141 Bateman, C. 34, 36, 39, 41–3, 56
Augustyn, M.M. 140 Bates, M. 41
auratic objects 176, 189, 193 Beckman, C. 116, 118
authenticity 7 Benjamin, W. 176, 181, 189, 193
cultural attractions 176, 177–81, Bernini, Gian Lorenzo 77–9
196–8, 199 Betty Nansen Theater 87, 93–4, 100,
urban leisure experiences 137–8, 150, 103, 105
151, 152 Bial, H. 50
Bitner, M.J. 168–9
Babette’s Feast (Dinesen) 25 Björk, S. 36, 43–5, 46, 47, 48, 49, 56
backstages 179 Black Rose Trick 205, 207–8, 210–12,
backstaging of experience production 213, 214–15
83–5, 107–8 Body Shop 116, 118, 119, 121
case studies 87–8 Boon, R. 34, 36, 39, 41–3, 56
Betty Nansen Theater 93–4, 100, Boorstin, D. 177
103, 105 Borghese park 80
Copenhagen Jazz House 92, 94–5 Borrie, W.T. 235
DR broadcasting 90, 92, 95, Borromini, Francesco 76
102–3, 104–5 bounded emotionality 118, 121
Hultsfred rock festival 95–6, 107 Bourdain, A. 27
IO Interactive 89–90, 91, 92, 106 brainwave activity 226–8
Roskilde rock festival 95, 101, 106 Brunelleschi, Filippo 74
contemporary production system Brunsson, N. 101
99–102 Bruyere, R.L. 227
253
Buber, M. 220 cooking

Buddhism 227, 228 as art 26–7
Buhalis, D. 139 celebrity chefs 27–8
Bull, C. 136, 141 see also food and eating experience
Burt, R.S. 120 Cooper, C. 139
Butler, J.P. 179 Copenhagen, development 218
Button, G. 161 Copenhagen Jazz House 87, 92, 94–5
Copenhagen Theater Community 93
Caillois, R. 51 Copp, C.B. 139, 140
Callon, M. 161 Copp, M.A. 116
Capello, R. 142 core experience 96–7, 98
Carême, Marie Antoine 24, 27, 29, 30 Craighero, L. 18
Carlson, M. 228–9 Crang, M. 184, 188, 198
Carlzon, J. 101 Crawford, C. 33
celebrity chefs 27–8 CrossArt project 219–20
cheese production 19–20 Csikszentmihalyi, M. 6, 52, 206
Childre, D. 210, 213, 222 Cullingford, C. 236, 248
Chodorow, J. 222 cultural heritage 188–96, 217–18
Christensen, S. 224 cultural tourism, consumer
Christiansen, I. 213 performance 176
church and food 25 authenticity 177–81, 196–9
church services 203 case studies
Ciborra, C. 161 approach and context 181–2
cinema experience sector 151–2 tourist photography 182, 183–8
Cloud 39 Viking Ship Museum 182,
Cohen, E. 197 188–96
Coherence 206, 207, 212–13, 221–2, performance theories 178–81
229 tourism theories 177–8, 179
Cole, D.E. 25 Culture-Clash festival 148
communication compass 223–4 Czarniawska, B. 123
computer chess 46, 47
computer games 33, 37, 46–7 Damasio, A.R. 205, 225
see also video games design Danish music industry entrepreneurs
computer golf 46, 47 111–12, 130–31
Congress of Vienna 29 entrepreneur’s tale 123–31
connective authenticity 199 experience creation of CDs 112–14
Conran, Terence 23, 30 method of analysis 114–16
consciousness 63–4, 221, 223, 226–9 theories 116–17
constructive authenticity 197 emotions and rationality together
consumer performance in cultural 117, 118
tourism 176 entrepreneurial theory on drivers
authenticity 177–81, 196–9 119–20
case studies measurable emotions 117
approach and context 181–2 passionate field 118–23
tourist photography 182, 183–8 rational and functional emotions
Viking Ship Museum 182, 188–96 117–18, 121
performance theories 178–81 Davidson, J. 25
tourism theories 177–8, 179 Davidson, R.J. 227–8
cookbooks 27 De Bono, E. 224
Cooke, P. 142 DeBresson, C. 144
Index 255
Dewsbury, J.-D. 180 rational and functional emotions

Disney experience 235 117–18, 121
Doom 37 Escoffier, George Auguste 27, 30
double consciousness 228–9 existential authenticity 197
DR broadcasting 87, 90, 92, 95, 102–3, the experience 1–2
104–5 experience creation 4–5
Dyer, J.H. 138 as a business activity 5–7
consumer perception see consumer
eating and food experience performance in cultural
as art 24–7 tourism; family tourism;
celebrity chef 27–8 performative processes
cultural capital 21–2 and innovation 6–8
eating experience 15–18 management of 9–10 see also
food and civilization 14–15 entrepreneurs in the music
food culture 13–14 industry; experience production
food in diplomacy 29–30 backstaging; innovation
food production 18–20 networks of urban leisure
host–guest relations 22–4 experiences; service industry
New Nordic Kitchen 28–9 experience oerings
Nouvelle Cuisine 26–7 experience design see food and eating
public institutions 20–21 experience; Rome, multisensory
Edensor, T. 179, 180 analysis; video games design
ego reactions 209–10, 211, 212, 216, experience economy 2–3
222–3 experience offerings in retail services
Ego Roulette 206, 209–10, 211, 212, 157–8, 174
222–3 actor network theory (ANT) 157,
Ehn, P. 161 160–62, 164–5, 168–70, 174
Eigen, Anders 114–15, 123, 124–30 artifact as tool and actor 160–61
Elias, N. 14 capacity for action 161–2
Eliasson, Olafur 204 case studies
emotions 117–18, 121, 204–5, 206, Manumission nightclub 162–3,
208–9 165, 168, 170–71
see also passion of music industry Prada, New York 165–6, 167–8,
entrepreneurs 170–71
Empire State Building 65 design of retail and service
Engberg-Pedersen, A. 204 environments 166, 168–70
Engel, L. 222 employee and environment
Enneagram 209, 212 combinations 170–71
entrepreneurs in the music industry employee and environment networks
111–12, 130–31 171–2
entrepreneur’s tale 123–31 employees and materiality 159
experience creation of CDs 112–14 implications for management 172–3
method of analysis 114–16 leisure experience offering 158–9
theories 116–17 objects with agency 163–5
emotions and rationality together user experience unpredictability 170
117, 118 experience production backstaging
entrepreneurial theory on drivers 83–5, 107–8
119–20 case studies 87–8
measurable emotions 117 Betty Nansen Theater 93–4, 100,
passionate field 118–23 103, 105
Copenhagen Jazz House 92, 94–5 Fischer, M.M. 138

DR broadcasting 90, 92, 95, flavour 15–16
102–3, 104–5 Fleischer, M. 17
Hultsfred rock festival 95–6, 107 Florida, R. 134, 135, 137, 138
IO Interactive 89–90, 91, 92, 106 Flyvbjerg, B. 115
Roskilde rock festival 95, 101, 106 food and eating experience
contemporary production system as art 24–7
99–102 celebrity chef 27–8
core experience 96–7, 98 cultural capital 21–2
experience concepts 94–6 eating experience 15–18
experience production system 85–6 food and civilization 14–15
taxonomies 88–91 food culture 13–14
innovation food in diplomacy 29–30
as crucial business activity 102–3 food production 18–20
new ways of organization 106–7 host–guest relations 22–4
strategic organization 103–6 New Nordic Kitchen 28–9
methodology and empirical basis Nouvelle Cuisine 26–7
86–8 public institutions 20–21
move from frontstage 96–8 Ford, D. 142
strategic orientation 91–4 Forum Romanum 63, 67
taxonomies of production system frontstage 83–4, 96–7, 99, 100–101, 179
88–91 see also backstaging of experience
total experience 98 production
Experiencescapes (O’Dell) 177 Fuglsang, L. 160
Falster Minder Museum 150–51, 153 Game Developers Choice Award 55

family gaze 182, 184–8, 197, 198 game literacy 38
family tourism 232–3 gamers see video games design
experience production 233–5 gamma waves 226, 227–8
experience dimension model 234, genealogy 193, 194–5, 196
249 Gibson, J. 64
family as decision-making unit Gibson, J.J. 180
237–9 Gibson, L. 139, 142
good holiday, children’s view Giddens, A. 121
235–6, 239 Gillett, G. 118
good holiday, parents’ view 236–7, Gilmore, J.H. 2, 3, 6, 18, 21, 83, 87,
239 100, 112, 176, 233, 249
study Gjedde, A. 222
conclusion 248–9 Godbey, G. 137
implications for tourism industry Goffman, E. 49, 179, 184
250 Goodall, B. 140, 142
methodology 240–43 Gordon, I. 140, 142
results 243–8 Gospodini, A. 137, 138
fantastic realism 182, 193, 195, 196, Grabher, G. 142
197–8 Granovetter, M. 119, 127
Fasting, N. 227 Gregson, N. 179
festivals see Culture-Clash festival; Grimod de la Reynière, Alexandre
Hultsfred rock festival; Roskilde Balthazar 27
rock festival; Vesterbro festival Guba, E.C. 115
Fineman, S. 116–17, 118 Gyimóthy, S. 234, 237, 239
Index 257
Haahti, A. 235 innovation networks of urban leisure

Håkansson, H. 142 experiences 134–6, 152–3
Halinen, A. 144 case study, Nykøbing Falster 143,
Hall, C.M. 134 152–3
Halme, M. 139 leisure experience nature and
Hammershus 176, 182, 183, 184, 185–8 geography 145–7
see also cultural tourism, consumer leisure space network geographies
performance 147
Hancock, M. 94 method 143–5
Harré, R. 118 other networking businesses
Hassard, J. 161 149–52
heartbeat 213–14 sub-sector crossing networks
HeartMath Institute 213, 221, 222 147–9
Heath, C. 161 urban leisure experiences
Hegel, F. 24–5 innovation network geography
heritage industry 188–96 138–43
hermeneutic circle of tourist nature and geography 136–8
photography 183–4 International Hobo 38–9
Hetherington, K. 188 internet games see MMORPGs
Hilden, Jytte 27 IO Interactive 87, 89–90, 91, 92, 106
Hjalager, A.M. 139, 141 Ivy, R.L. 139, 140
Hochschild, A.R. 118, 121
Høffding, Sine 218 Jacobsen, K. 92
holiday decision-making see family Jakobsen, M.D. 227
tourism Jakriborg, Sweden 217
Holmen, E. 138, 142 Jennsen, D. 236
Holopainen, J. 36, 43–5, 46, 47, 48, 49, Jensen, R. 3, 112, 113, 114, 248
56 Jensen, T.B. 219
Hooper-Greenhill, E. 188 Jóhannesson, G.T. 198
Hotel Hunger 125, 127, 128–9 Johns, N. 234, 237, 239
Huizinga, J. 46, 50 Jolly Chor(a) 206, 210, 211, 212, 213,
Hultsfred rock festival 87, 95–6, 107 223, 227, 229
Jolly Lobe 228
I Love Bees 55 Jung, C.G. 223
Ibiza, Manumission nightclub 162–3, Jurowski, C. 235, 236, 248
165, 168, 170–71 Juul, J. 35, 51
‘Ich und Du’ (Buber) 220
identity-creating process 206–7, 212, Kairos 206, 207, 212–13
215–16, 219–20 Keirsey, D. 41
IDEO designs see Manumission Keleman, S. 213
nightclub; Prada, New York Kelly, T. 222
indie music see entrepreneurs in the Killer 54
music industry Kleinman, S. 116
Ingold, T. 180 Kluge, A. 181
innovation 7–8 Knopoff, K. 116, 118
innovation in experience production Knorr Cetina, K. 160
102–8 Knowles, T. 140
as crucial business activity 102–3 Korsmeyer, C. 24, 25
new ways of organization 106–7 Kreiner, K. 224
strategic organization 103–6 Kringelbach, M.L. 205, 225
kundalini energy 227 Martinsen, T. 217

Kurti, N. 24 Maskell, P. 139
Massive Multiplayer Online Role
La Dolce Vita (film) 62 Playing Games (MMORPGs) 37,
Larsen, J. 182 40, 53
Larsen, S. 236, 248 Mazzarella, M. 114, 115
Lash, S. 177 McCraty, R. 205, 213, 214, 221–2
Lash, S.M. 137 McGonigal, J. 53
Latour, B. 157, 161, 163–4 McNeal, J.U. 235, 238
Law, C.M. 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 140 Meat Market project 218–19, 220–21
Law. J. 161, 165 Medieval Centre, Nykøbing 149–50,
Lazzaro, N. 35 151, 153
Lee, B. 134 Meyhoff, K.W. 204
Legoland 237 Michelin Guide 26
leisure experiences, urban innovation milk production 19–20
networks 134–6, 152–3 Milne, S. 139, 141
case study, Nykøbing Falster 143, Mirdal, G.M. 223
152–3 MMORPGs 37, 40, 53
leisure experience nature and molecular gastronomy 24
geography 145–7 Monopoly 33
leisure space network geographies Montola, M. 53, 54
147 Morgan, N. 235
method 143–5 Morrison, A.J. 139, 140, 141
other networking businesses Mossberg, L. 85, 234
149–52 museums 188
sub-sector crossing networks see also Falster Minder Museum;
147–9 Viking Ship Museum, Roskilde
urban leisure experiences music industry entrepreneurs 111–12,
innovation network geography 130–31
138–43 entrepreneur’s tale 123–31
nature and geography 136–8 experience creation of CDs 112–14
Lévi-Strauss, C. 18 method of analysis 114–16
Lindstrom, M. 237, 238 theories 116–17
Littman, J. 222 emotions and rationality together
Lund, J.M. 217 117, 118
Lury, C. 196 entrepreneurial theory on drivers
119–20
MacCannell, D. 178, 179, 197 measurable emotions 117
magic circle in video games 46, 54, 55 passionate field 118–23
majors (multinational record labels) rational and functional emotions
126, 127, 128 117–18, 121
Malecki, E.J. 139 Musicon Valley 87, 106
Malmberg, A. 139 Myers-Briggs system 41, 43
Mangham, I.L. 116–17, 118
Mangor, A.M. 18 The Naked Chef 28
Manumission nightclub 158, 162–3, Nash, C. 196
165, 168, 170–71 national cuisine 28–9
de Marinis, M. 49 Negt, O. 181
Markus, G. 193 New Nordic Kitchen 28–9
Martin, J. 116, 118 Nickerson, N.P. 235, 236, 248
Index 259
Nicolini, D. 165 performance theories 178–81

Nielsen, L.B. 235 tourism theories 177–8, 179
Normann, R. 94 performance theatre installation,
Nørrebro 218 ‘Black Rose Trick’ 205, 207–8,
Norregård-Nielsen, H.E. 69 210–12, 213, 214–15
Nouvelle Cuisine 26–7 performance theories 178–81
Nykær, M. 66 performative processes 203–4
Nykøbing Falster, case study 143, communication and body 221–2
152–3 communication compass 223–4
leisure experience nature and consciousness states 226–8
geography 145–7 performers and other professionals
leisure space network geographies 221
147 project management paradigms
method 143–5 224–6
other networking businesses Space-Spirit Interaction
149–52 Black Rose Trick 205, 207–8,
sub-sector crossing networks 147–9 210–12, 213, 214–15
Ego Roulette and Jolly Chor(a)
objective authenticity 197 209–10, 222–3
O’Dell, T. 177 emotions 208–9
Oinas, P. 139 ethics, interaction innovation
Oliver, Jamie 28 214–15
online games see MMORPGs experiencing 204–5
Oxland, K. 44 identity-creating process 215–16,
219–20
Palazzo Spada 76 Kairos and Coherence 212–14
Pantheon, Rome 67, 68 longing to belong 216–18
passion of music industry Meat Market project 218–19,
entrepreneurs 111–12, 130–31 220–21
entrepreneur’s tale 123–31 the model 205–7
experience creation of CDs 112–14 universal reactions 209
method of analysis 114–16 Vesterbro Festival 219–20
theories 116–17 performativity 179, 180
emotions and rationality together peripheral services 100–101
117, 118 Pine, J.B. 2, 3, 6, 18, 21, 83, 87, 100,
entrepreneurial theory on drivers 112, 176, 233, 249
119–20 Plato 25
measurable emotions 117 Ponte Sisto 61
passionate field 118–23 Poon, A. 142
rational and functional emotions Pozzo, Andrea 74
117–18, 121 Prada, New York 158, 165–6, 167–8,
Patterns in Game Design (Björk and 170–71
Holopainen) 36, 43 primary experience sector 85
Pavitt, K. 8, 90 Project Entropia 40
performance in cultural tourism 176 project management paradigms 224–6
authenticity 177–81, 196–9 psychic functions 223
case studies
approach and context 181–2 reality video games 52, 54–5
tourist photography 182, 183–8 A la recherche du temps perdu (Proust)
Viking Ship Museum 182, 188–96 16–17
Relph, E. 177 Rouse, R. 44

retail service industry experience Rozman, D. 210, 213, 222
offerings 157–8, 174 Rust, L. 238
actor network theory (ANT) 157, Ryan, C. 239
160–62, 164–5, 168–70, 174
artifact as tool and actor 160–61 Salen, K. 34
capacity for action 161–2 Samuels, M. 226
case studies Samuels, N. 226
Manumission nightclub 162–3, Savarin, B. 29
165, 168, 170–71 Schechner, R. 18, 50, 52, 221
Prada, New York 165–6, 167–8, Schieffelin, E. 180
170–71 Schofield, P. 134, 135, 136, 137, 139,
design of retail and service 140
environments 166, 168–70 Schön, D.A. 224, 228
employee and environment Schumpeter, J.A. 120, 126, 128
combinations 170–71 Seaton, A.V. 236
employee and environment networks secondary experience sector 85
171–2 service industry experience offerings
employees and materiality 159 157–8, 174
implications for management 172–3 actor network theory (ANT) 157,
leisure experience offering 158–9 160–62, 164–5, 168–70, 174
objects with agency 163–5 artifact as tool and actor 160–61
user experience unpredictability 170 capacity for action 161–2
Rios, Alicia 24 case studies
Ritz, César 27, 30 Manumission nightclub 162–3,
Rizzolatti, G. 18 165, 168, 170–71
Roberts, K. 136, 140 Prada, New York 165–6, 167–8,
Robinson, J. 137 170–71
Roddick, A. 119 design of retail and service
Roedder John, D. 237, 238 environments 166, 168–70
Roepstorff, A. 222 employee and environment
Rolls, E.T. 16 combinations 170–71
Roman holiday (film) 62 employee and environment networks
Rome, multisensory analysis 60–61, 66 171–2
art 71–4, 75, 76, 77–80 employees and materiality 159
art and power 77–80 implications for management 172–3
contrasts and fear 70–71 leisure experience offering 158–9
fashion 71–2, 73 objects with agency 163–5
film icons 62, 67 user experience unpredictability 170
food 72, 74, 75, 76 ‘Servicescapes: The Impact of Physical
iconic representations 62 Surroundings on Customers and
multisensory consciousness 63–4 Employees’ (Bitner) 168–9
space and linear perspective 74, 76–7 Shafer, C.S. 134
spatial position 64–5 Shields, R. 184
tourism 66–70, 80–81 Simmel, G. 17
Rose, G. 179 The Sims 40, 49
Roskilde rock festival 87, 95, 101, 106 The Sims Online 53
Roskilde University 106, 218 Singh, H. 138
Roskilde, Viking Ship Museum 176, Socrates 25
182, 188–96 Sørensen, Signa 205, 211, 215
Index 261
Space–Spirit Interaction case studies

Black Rose Trick 205, 207–8, approach and context 181–2
210–12, 213, 214–15 tourist photography 182, 183–8
emotions 208–9 Viking Ship Museum 182,
ethics, interaction innovation 214–15 188–96
experiencing 204–5 performance theories 178–81
identity-creating process 215–16, tourism theories 177–8, 179
219–20 The Tourist: A New Theory of the
Kairos and Coherence 212–14 Leisure Class (MacCannell) 178
longing to belong 216–18 The Tourist Gaze (Urry) 178
Meat Market project 218–19, traces 193, 199
220–21 trance 226–7
the model 205–7 Tremblay, P. 141
universal reactions 209 trust 119, 127
Vesterbro Festival 219–21 21st-century game design (Bateman and
Spanish Stairs, Rome 69 Boon) 35, 36
St. Ignazio Church, Rome 74, 76
St. Peter’s Cathedral, Rome 61, 67 urban leisure experiences, innovation
Stacey, Ralph D. 114, 121 networks 134–6, 152–3
staged authenticity 179, 197 case study, Nykøbing Falster 143,
star rating system 26 152–3
Stern, D. 213 leisure experience nature and
Strati, A. 160, 161–2 geography 145–7
Symons, M. 25 leisure space network geographies
Szulborski, D. 54 147
method 143–5
Tagg, S. 236 other networking businesses
Talleyrand, Charles de 29 149–52
taste 15–16 sub-sector crossing networks
Tellström, R. 29 147–9
Tetris 53 urban leisure experiences
That Cloud Game 39 innovation network geography
Thierstein, A. 107 138–43
This, H. 24 nature and geography 136–8
Thornton, P. 239 Urry, J. 137, 177, 178, 183, 184
Thorvaldsen, Bertel 69
3D technology in video games 37 van Maanen, J. 123
Thrift, N. 180 Vedfelt, O. 222
The Timeless Way of Building Vesterbro Festival 218–21
(Alexander) 45 video game genre 37
Törnroos, J-Å. 144 video games design 33–7
total experience 97, 98, 108, 136, 150 casual gamers 38, 40, 42
tourism see urban leisure experiences, family gamers 39
innovation networks game design patterns 43–9, 56–7
tourism theories 177–8, 179 boundary components 47–8
tourist industry see family tourism; communication 48
Rome, multisensory analysis concepts development 48
tourist performance at cultural game patterns 47–8
attractions 176 holistic components 46
authenticity 177–81, 196–9 idea generation 48
problem solving 48 magic circle 46, 54, 55

structural components 47 testosterone gamers 39, 40
temporal components 47 Viking Ship Museum, Roskilde 176,
gameplay 44, 57 182, 188–96
games as performances 55–6, 57 see also cultural tourism, consumer
game performance 51–2 performance
performance theory 49–53 Villa Borghese park 80
pervasive games 53–4 virtual Internet worlds 40
reality games 52, 54–5 Visser, M. 23
ritual and rules 50–51 Von Mises, L. 119
social extension 54–5
Vectors of High Performance Waern, A. 54
Gameplay 53 Walker, W. 8
games for the market 36, 43 Walsh, K. 188
audience models 37–9 Wang, N. 197, 198
boundary components 46–7 Weick, K.E. 118, 128
complexity 40 Whirling Dervishes 54
demographic game design 36, Wilhelm, B. 107
39–43, 56 Williams, S. 136, 137
game session 40–41 wine industry 22
gameplay 40 Winnie-the-Pooh (Milne) 13
genre models 36–7 World of Warcraft 40, 47
interface 40
play window 41 Yavas, U. 235
psychological theory 41–3 Yee, N. 36
hardcore gamers 38, 41, 42 Young, Neil 122
innovation 56–7
lifestyle gamers 39 Zimmerman, E. 34

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Creating Experiences in the Experience

• The economics of services

The New Service Economy

SERVICES, ECONOMY AND INNOVATION

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc.

A catalogue record for this book

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data

Creating experiences in the experience economy / edited by Jon Sundbo,

ISBN 978 1 84720 930 6

1 Introduction to experience creation 1

Part I Experience creation design

Part II Management of experience creation

Part III Consumer perception of experience creation

Connie Svabo, PhD scholar in experience and organization, Department

The concept of experience is rather new, primarily introduced by two

2 THE EXPERIENCE ECONOMY

So far, the literature has been dominated by an emphasis on experience pro-

3 AIM OF THE BOOK: EXPERIENCE CREATION

The broader scope of experience creation goes beyond all companies

4 CREATION OF EXPERIENCES AS A BUSINESS

The focus on the experience economy and experiences as a business activ-

The perspective of experience creation introduced in this book is a

5 EXPERIENCE AND INNOVATION

Experience creation seems similar to innovation, which is a topic that is

bottom-up approach to this, by looking at the circumstances and behaviour

6 OUTLINE OF THE BOOK

6.1 Experience Creation Designs

6.2 Management of Experience Creation

Experience creation includes peripheral services such as the bar in a theatre,

6.3 Consumer Perception of Experience Creation

In Chapter 9, ‘Performing cultural attractions’, Bærenholdt, Haldrup

7 THE AUTHOR TEAM

Adorno, T. (1975), Gesellschaftstheorie und Kulturkritik, Frankfurt a. M (Suhrkamp).

2 FOOD AND CIVILIZATION

Access to suﬃcient amounts of food is an absolute condition for life and

The development of technology during the industrialization of agricul-

3 THE EATING EXPERIENCE

4 FROM NATURE TO BODY AND BACK AGAIN

It is obvious that cooking, whether it is done in the home or elsewhere, is a

product if we cannot trust the stories told by the producer? Conﬁdence is

5 FOOD IN PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS

which it is consumed. In an average Danish hospital, 30 per cent of the pre-

6 APPRECIATING FOOD REQUIRES CULTURAL

7 THE HOST–GUEST RELATION

A meal can take place in a home, restaurant or hospital, or it can just be

Spanish restaurant elBulli and a leading ﬁgure in the modern movement

8 CAN FOOD BE AN ART FORM?

Does it make sense to regard certain kinds of food preparations as forms

According to Friedrich Hegel, food could be enjoyed or found disgusting,

European cuisine underwent a profound change when La Nouvelle Cuisine

gastronomic critique Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimod de la Reynière

10 THE CELEBRITY CHEF

This was written in a collection of essays by celebrity chef Anthony

11 THE NEW NORDIC KITCHEN

Food plays an import role in the creation of identity, personal as well as

9. To combine local self-suﬃciency with regional exchange of high-quality

12 THE FOOD EXPERIENCE AS A TOOL IN

The meal is a powerful instrument in the process of negotiation in business

Bourdain, A. (2006), The Nasty Bits, London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

This, H. and N. Kurti (2002), Molecular Gastronomy, Exploring the Science of

1.1 The Design of Video Games

of interaction. But designing innovative games is not trivial. Professional