American Creativity Association
2007 International Conference

Conference Presentations and Presenters
2007 ACA International Conference
March 21 - 23, 2007 with pre-Conference Institutes - March 20, 2007
in Austin, Texas

Creating Transformational Experiences

Jamie O'Boyle, Senior Analyst
Margaret J. King, Ph.D., Director
Cultural Studies & Analysis
1123 Montrose Street
Philadelphia, PA 19147-3721
215.592.8544 phone
215.413.9041 fax
www.culturalanalysis.com

Jamie O'Boyle has done cross-cultural field studies and written on global culture from areas as wide-ranging as the Middle and Far East, West Africa, the former Soviet Union, and Northern Ireland. He developed the complex systems model used to identify and track patterns of behavior and decision making within national and institutional cultures. He is on the Boards of the the American Creativity Association and the Geographical Society of Philadelphia, and is Vice President of Fellows in American Studies. He has lectured widely on the unconscious assumptions that drive American decision-making at institutions such as The University of Greenwich at the Old Royal Naval College (UK), Universidad de las Américas Puebla (Mexico), and Harvard University (US). His work in human perception, shared values, and behavior has been used by clients as diverse as Walt Disney Imagineering, Dupont, Thomas Jefferson University, General Mills, Best Buy, Pfizer, 3M, The Autry Museum of Western Heritage, Helzberg Diamonds, and Six Flags.

Margaret J. King is a nationally recognized expert on consumer behavior and wrote the seminal appreciation of theme parks as cultural products. She received the first graduate degree ever earned in Popular Culture from the Center for the Study of Popular Culture and the Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Hawaii. Research at the Culture Learning Institute at the East-West Center included fieldwork in Tokyo and Kyoto. Her research areas range from theme parks, museums, the popular arts, the nature of creativity, film, television, cross-cultural issues, and marketing, to consumer psychology, decision-making, and culture theory. Dr. King's studies of culture appear in over fifty publications including Industry Week, The Futurist, Museum News, American Marketing Association Newsletter, Antioch Review, The Conference Board, Journal of American Culture, International Popular Culture, Journal of Material Culture, Journal of Creative Behavior, Innovative Leader, Mature Marketing Media, and Marketing Insights. She wrote the entries for Disneyland and Walt Disney World for the Dictionary of Popular Culture, and defined the theme park for The Guide to U.S. Popular Culture. Her body of work includes contributions to numerous books, including The Cultures of Celebration, The World of Ronald McDonald, Research in Culture Learning: Language and Conceptual Studies, The American Mosaic, and Advertising and Popular Culture.

Creating Transformational Experiences

In their book, The Experience Economy, authors Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore chart the Progression of Economic Value from commodity to experience, rating Transformational Experiences as those with the highest value to consumers.

People transform throughout their lifetime. Creating experiences that actually help change people's sense of who they are and how they view the world -- experiences that they are willing to pay for -- means understanding the process of developing, experiencing, and changing that goes on throughout the human life cycle.

The most effective experiences are those that validate, enhance, and reflect who people feel they are. This session explains how the process of human transformation works and identifies the transformation points where people are most receptive to creative Transformational Experiences.

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