Experience strategy as coreography

I am always delighted to see Peterme use metaphors to explain in a very understandable way concepts that many people have trouble talking about in a clear way. The latest example I have bumped into is his no-nonesense explanation to the Harvard business suit crowd of what customer experience is:

"[it] isn't about money -- in my work, the biggest impact I've seen a customer experience mindset have is to help companies understand how they can better orchestrate existing elements to realize new value. I'm sure that sounds like some retread of the dreaded "Business Process Reengineering", but there's a key distinction -- this isn't about efficiency and effectiveness and reducing waste throughout your processes. This is about choreographing what you already have (technologies, people, offerings) to better respond to your customers' needs and wants."

When looking around me for the artifacts I enjoy using the most these days, I can't help realize how many of them are choreographed as more than just 'one trick pony' products. They are stupendous ensembles of pieces which are connected in a way that deliver a value to me far greater than the sum of its pieces. Here just some examples of what I am talking about:

• Monocle: I like to refer to it as my monthly easy-reading digest on 'wordology'. The paper magazine delightfully covers a wide range of topics from A to E [Affairs-Business-Culture-Design-Edits], which makes it very convenient to stay up to date on current events without having to go through zillions of publications. They do the editing and orchestrating of distinctive non-mainstream stories for you and that's basically what you pay for: convenience . Oh, and also for making the most of your scarce free time, something other media outlets have not fully grasped yet (haven't media executives read about the attention economy in their own publications?). Besides reading the mag on paper I like to complement the experience by listening to their British accent flavoured weekly podcast, and check out every now and then their RSS feeds on my saturated gReader.
  
• Songbird: think about it as an open source patchwork app that uses the browsing capabilities Firefox, an audio player with the capabilities of iTunes, and the flexibility of dozens of extensions to customize your listening experience (think last.fm, contextual song lyrics, concert tickets, related artists, etc.). If all these pieces already existed before Songbird, what is so awesome about this new app? The reason is that you can do everything you used to do with multiple apps (torrent client, browser, audio player) but now without having to leave a single app: look for new MP3s on Hypemachine, subscribe and download songs from mp3 blogs, read music news sites, access your last.fm account, listen to on-line radio, etc.
  
• Garmin Forerunner 405: what i love about this sport watch is how seamlessly all the pieces work together. The wrist watch helps you keep track of time and heat zones during training. The desktop app downloads the data without having to remove the watch from your wrist to do deeper analysis of your workout. And the web app allows you to access your training data from anywhere and share it with training mates. It is so easy to take data into the computer that the first thing I do after running is to upload the data to the computer and review the training. Yes, that inmediate.

So-called innovators are always on the look for the next big thing, thinking such thing has to be a totally new groundbreaking product that no one has ever thought of it. In reality they would probably be better of and way more effective if only the looked into how to do more and better with thet things they already have around. Something a creativity masters already said some time ago when talking about creativity and originality:

“It’s not where you take things from—it’s where you take them to.”
Jean Luc Godard