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The surging interest in liminality over the last 10 years from culture, academia, and corporations is not surprising: the future promise of technology has lost its shine despite unprecedented advances (Where is my jetpack?) but gained no patina or allure. We are fatigued with the plethora of flickering screens and the circus barking of online media’s pandering for our attention. Humans have better things to do. During the same time, concrete work has been underway to understand and design for liminal products. Contrasting the current transactional view on technology and users, liminality brings deep-rooted tradition of human culture to technology — a potent antidote promising very personal, deeper, and more meaningful experiences. Businesses are trying to figure out what to do with it.

Liminal Products are built to promote existentially active experiences: core social interaction, personal transformation, creativity, and explorations that challenge our perspective on ourselves and the world. Such engagements are not transactional, nor are they looking to increase productivity: they are designed to create distinct spaces for us to slow down, and for a moment set aside the noisy practicalities of the day-to-day world to explore the extraordinary and the unknown. Liminality has always been part of the human heritage: places of worship, art, rituals, or getting lost in a well-crafted book or film — all places and spaces connecting the in-between here and now, with the profound and ungraspable. These liminal experiences thrive on ambiguity and surprise. Can you build a business around the same?

From transaction to experience

The liminalist would ask: what explorations in a particular commercial context can promise something deeply meaningful that we cannot have in the ordinary — yet also reward someone with new and surprising real world insights? It’s a familiar paradox: Aristotle suggested that all great stories need to be both inevitable and surprising, at the same time. Kant similarly described the ‘sublime experience’ as “holding both pleasure and pain, simultaneously”, and with his “mathematical sublime” makes the case for how this is also the way we might grasp what is bigger than ourselves and our language for the world. Poetry arguably works in a similar fashion.

Neuroscience has recently validated this philosophical foundation, showing that complex emotions are not processed by toggling back and forth between feelings of pleasure and then pain, but cognitively managed by separate faculties as one: complex emotions. This adds color to the transformational qualities of liminal spaces — promoting change, trust, creativity, openness, and new perspectives. Much like in art, it is the non-linear ambiguity of an experience that adds novel and expanded perspectives on our existing world and ourselves.

Liminality is often thought of as an in-between space. This is true: it is always an encounter paradox that isn’t solved with a simple correction. It stops us curiously in a space held between two notions that cannot be true at the same time. And yet, there we are — our perspective on ‘what is’ changes. Liminality goes beyond enabling ‘just’ experiences; it always challenges the status quo — the unpredictable trickster, when we let it. The key ingredient is meaningful surprise. A formulaic and predictable entertainment ‘thrill’ courtesy of Disneyland or Netflix would not suffice.

From consumption to deeper dialogue

Consequently, liminality is not a slap-dash branding exercise. Nor is it a well-meaning virtue-signalling experiment. Or, big oil funding an art show at the Tate Modern in London. The liminal experience demands to be woven into the very fabric of the actual product, its meaning and features. To do this, we have to dig deep for a bigger purpose in the existing business, its product categories, and problem spaces — and then optimize design around that.

This is liminal design — a paradigm shift from predictable transactions to liminal experiences that fundamentally changes the relationship between users and products. The value is not ‘delivered’ and done — it’s dynamically co-created in an interactive dialogue, often evolving and enriching over time. Good hiking boots don’t “fail” by looking less new, they “succeed” by being broken in and showing signs of your brave explorations — it’s a coveted patina. This should also be true for technology and our relationship to AI.

Good questions always trump correct answers

As liminalists, we might ask how searching with Google can yield more than correct answers — how might an inquiry lead to new bold explorations and more interesting questions around the same topic? To be both relevant and surprising at the same time. And perhaps naively optimistic (inherently liminal!), we should ask how Amazon, in its imperial delivery of packages, could conjure up the same anticipation of both joy and want that we felt as children when waiting for a toy we had been saving up for over the summer. And in doing so, shift the focus from instant gratification that can only be satiated by more, faster. Or, how might Zoom turn video conferencing from an unfocused clutter of corporate isolation to a tool for deep, focused, and meaningful conversations that bring social connection and an actual reduction in business travel? Possible? Of course it is. For liminal design, the deeper question always trumps the correct answer. And how fitting then, to focus on surprise where transactions reign.

A framework and practical design process to build engaging liminal experiences with many concrete examples is discussed in earlier articles of this article series — with enthusiastic detail. The above example of Zoom is covered in “Liminality and Remote Presence.” “Liminal Design and the Corporate Sublime” looks at finding the profound in ordinary products, and the peculiar opportunities afforded by AI are discussed in “On AI as fiction” and “The Liminal Epistemology of Chat-GTP.” And for an overview on liminality, “How to Kiss a Cannibal” and the academic paper Liminal Design, a three step approach… (Liedgren, et al 2023) provide both theoretical frameworks and practical tools for product development and design leaders.

The suggestion here is that a liminal approach to growth and product design will envision novel product categories as well as additional ways to create value, expanded eco-system, and new opportunities to generate recurring revenue. What is missing today are revenue models that capture fluid and longer term engagements evolving long after the product has been bought and delivered.

A Framework for Economic Exploration

Business models are not fixed or determined. And we are certainly not the first generation of business leaders to face disruptive change from societal and technological advancement. History documents a wild evolution from bartering, to agriculture, extractive, industrial, service, information, and more recently: the experience economy. The “liminal economy” is a very natural extension of this.

In fact, one may even argue that while Pine & Gilmore’s book “Welcome to the Experience Economy” encouraged businesses to think beyond traditional offerings, it did not necessarily outline new business models, and suggested enhancing existing ones by integrating experiential elements — an evolution, rather than a revolution in the business strategy. A liminal economy could see more than enhancements — the true emergence of newer business models aligned with the modern-day need for liminal products.

New economies must enable new business models aligned with the new value perception. New business models take time to evolve, and even more so, find their way to products and mass adoption. There are a few good candidates, but if we, for a baseline, start with low hanging fruit and what we already know, we have at least two fundamental upsides to liminal product development:

• Creation of radically new product categories, often by deepening and re-contextualizing existing behavior and hardware. This is not years of research with state of the art unproven technology. These are brave new use-cases, often based on non-digital behaviour with deep roots in culture and social interaction — an old metaphor placed in a new context to set up a liminal space. Brands benefit from the sincere positioning, and bottom lines from the first mover advantage.
• Hardware with subscriptions: Because experiences deepen and evolve over time, the product will embody past interactions. This longer term perspective, both back and forth in time, makes the memory and corpus of detailed interactions core to the ever-evolving offering powered by AI. This allows what used to be a single sale of hardware to now also justify long term subscriptions.

Apple has built an empire around combining new product categories with subscription models that play beyond a single device. And although this might be reason enough to warrant a deep look at how a company’s products, technology, and traditional use cases can be complimented with a liminal perspective — it does not capture an intimate relationship that is existentially relevant. It’s still just based on a narrative of multi device convenience. Here, instead, we are specifically searching for economic models that can go hand in hand with true liminal use: a deeply personal, gradually deepening use over time, based on the ability to provide novel and meaningful existential surprise. Let’s play that out –

Co-created functionality

As a user deepens and expands her dialectic relationship with a product, we will see new use patterns and custom functionality that go well beyond the original product and intent. AI plays a pivotal enabling part for liminal technology, able not only to capture history and stage our experiences from real time behavior, but also to allow new functionality and UI to grow from highly personalized interactions. New levels of use and product expansion open the door to new levels of subscription — all highly personalized. A 2024 BCG report notes a 30% growth in the adoption of AI-driven adaptive pricing.

Liminal Journey Expanded to Wider Eco-systems

The liminal relationship and journey a user might have isn’t necessarily bound by a single device. Again, the success of Apple’s brand and connective tissue through software and subscriptions spans much of its full product line. The same can be true for liminal relationships, just as it is for any personal relationship. What we have built and learned in one place, we might want to benefit from in another. Products that might not have basic functional connections with each other in a true ecosystem sense might very well be placed or used in a way where they can play out versions of the same narrative journey. Or better yet, novel ways to extend the same intimate existential exploration from different perspectives, different contexts, and devices.

This has clear branding and long term subscription benefits — the core liminal ‘operating system’ (OS) will not be bound by a device but by the uniqueness of the individual user as captured over time. While the experience economy states that you (a customer) are the product, the liminal economy argues that “you are the OS”. The bigger question that drives the liminal exploration is pushed to the center, not what shoes we use to walk the path. With AI aiding the manifestation of the relationship between different product worlds, a liminal eco-system might very well include devices or services that were sold a long time ago, by another brand. The liminal ambiguity becomes a feature. So there it is again, consistent with liminal principles: the bigger question that keeps fascinating, always trumps the one-time correct answer. Even if the answer is convenient and quick.

Social liminality

The transformational value and key experience drivers for liminality can, of course, be experienced by a single person. There are numerous examples already mentioned, such as books and films, that can deliver profound experiences without anyone else around. However, because it is fundamental to being human, much of liminality is concerned with the space in-between two or individuals — the evolving and unique interconnections that become love, family, and friendship. The infinite exploration here is not of a ‘thing’, but that of another person, where trust, creativity, and intimacy grow and evolve over time. With even bigger groups participating in meaningful co-creation (sports, worship, clubs, neighborhood groups, social causes etc.), liminal transformation is manifested through social feedback loops: change is acknowledged and endorsed by others, and in it, we become part of something bigger than ourselves. The same can be true for the revenue flow.

A product might promote built in functionality that supports social expansion, such as features built around the social connectors that drive expansion. Revenue models, accordingly, would look for themes and deeper explorations that can be shared with others using the product or service to build a community to reinforce belonging. More ‘users’, a bigger ‘liminal space’, and far more layers of ‘complex interaction’ opening up for additional models. Someone contributing to a shared space in very meaningful ways might be charged less than someone passively participating.

AI as radical enabler and trickster

AI plays at least two key roles in the roll-out of liminal models. Firstly, its ability to dynamically track and react to complex behaviours in real time makes it a natural partner for liminal products and the evolving dialogue between human and product.

Secondly, although we should very carefully consider how generative AI might play out through a more active role in liminal relationships: surprise. We have to tread carefully. Generative AI itself cannot be the surprise. It’s not an active participant, like another human might be. A ‘weird or random” digital assistant could surely be surprisingly unreliable, but that doesn’t deepen our journey in any meaningful way, nor provide interesting challenges to our assumptions.

This takes us back to Aristotle’s paradox: inevitable and surprising, at the same time. AI, however, is uniquely well suited for charting novel connections and patterns in vast amounts of data. A liminal perspective on language models would take our discussions, exchanges, and explorations, and highlight promising ambiguity, new metaphors, bigger questions, etc. Ways that our current patterns can be challenged to push up against assumptions and open up for bigger epistemological adventures. Inevitable and relevant. Yes. Surprising. Absolutely. All at the same time.

Where we go from here

It is time for liminalists, economists, technologists, and market researchers to get together and discuss how we approach these new opportunities. It will be a more interesting discussion than trying to slice an existing corporate cake in slightly more efficient ways. The questions before a liminal economy are by nature profound. They are about humans and what it means to be alive. They are steeped in ambiguity and lack of control. These discussions will force a more intimate bond between deeper purpose, business model, and commercial product. We welcome all of it. As will our current business models, now running dry on empty promises of never-ending scalability.

If someone from the 70’s stopped in for a second today, they would likely be terrified and profoundly disappointed with what they saw for ‘progress’ — that so many grown-ups looked lonely, miserable, and were busy with seemingly unremarkable and prosaic toils. Our time traveller expected better, and returned with a headache. We can do better. What we already have at hand is a century of academic study of liminality and its affects. We also have a deep understanding of how to apply and design for liminality in very real products, services, and spaces. And, for the evergreen argument, we have a profound and proven market demand that has been there since the dawn of man.

Johan Liedgren
Founder of The Liminal Circle, an international think tank of liminal philosophers, technologists, researchers and designers. Liedgren is an ward-winning film-director, author and advisor working with media and technology companies on liminal design strategy, narrative, and product development. https://www.liminalcircle.com http://www.liedgren.com

Samir Mehta
Samir Mehta is a seasoned entrepreneur and C-level executive with over 30 years of experience across the automotive, e-commerce, digital media, pay TV, consumer electronics, and telecommunications industries. Currently, he serves as a Strategic Advisor at Accretive Partners, a boutique investment bank. He also teaches at the University of Washington’s Information School and mentors the next generation of entrepreneurs and technologists at iStartup Lab in Seattle, WA. https://www.linkedin.com/in/samirnmehta/

For more articles in our series on applied liminality, visit Medium https://medium.com/@johan_liedgren