Writers from BusinessWeek, Harvard Business Review, Wired, and even Rolling Stone have all pronounced that design thinking — the process of developing products and services that are both feasible and meet user needs — is the key to successful innovation. And they’re right.

What they don’t tell you is that all the innovation in the world won’t help your company. It won’t strengthen your brand. Not unless your innovations serve a higher purpose. But the vast majority of businesses have no higher purpose. As a result, their products and features are disconnected from their goals. Their marketing is focused on value-adds rather than value propositions. Their message has no message. There’s no there there.

That’s where experience strategy comes in. Experience strategy is design thinking for your whole business. It tells you which ideas will help and which won't. It tells you if that new product will lead to a unified brand or a disjointed one. It’s what turns a shoe store into Zappos, a car company into MINI, and a software company into Apple.

In this session, Robert Hoekman, Jr., author of Designing the Obvious and Designing the Moment and the coauthor of Web Anatomy, presents the essential elements of experience strategy. He gives you the principles you need to stop navigating your way through the trees and instead start designing the forest. And he shows you that developing an experience strategy involves an understandable, repeatable, commonsense process with a clear purpose and a clear result.