Marc Stickdorn
He/Him
CEO
Smaply
Marc Stickdorn is the author of the era-defining books This is Service Design Thinking and This is Service Design Doing. As a global authority on service design, Marc helps organisations bridge the gap between theory and practice through his work as a speaker, trainer, and consultant. He is the founder and CEO of Smaply, the world’s leading platform for journey management, designed to align cross-functional teams and drive experience-centric transformation. Based in Innsbruck, Austria, Marc is a passionate athlete. While he once spent his days as a surfing and snowboarding instructor, he now finds his flow in the mountains and over a perfect cup of coffee.
Talk
Scaling the Connective Tissue: The State of Journey Management 2026
Why are our management approaches failing to orchestrate the very experiences we promise to our customers?
Building on the foundation of the ‘This is’ series and ‘This is Service Design Doing’, authors Marc Stickdorn, Anna Yip, and Sayali Bharambe present the results of their landmark ‘State of Journey Management’ research and next publication, ‘This is Journey Management’. As the most extensive study into this emerging practice, this research synthesises insights from 285+ contributors across 27 countries to address the friction between theory and practice.
While many organisations map journeys, few successfully use them to drive operational and strategic investment decisions. This talk moves beyond static Journey Maps to reveal over 96 activities and tools that define Journey Management as an emerging Management practice. We identify why legacy management approaches, which fail to override the rigidity of silos, are crumbling under the complexities organisations face today. We will demonstrate how Journey Management serves as the 'connective tissue' to unify disparate management practices and bridge the gap between fundamentally different concepts shaping how leaders pursue strategic success. Join us to explore the global state of the field and discover what this emerging, adaptive management practice looks like today and where it is headed tomorrow.
This is a co-presented talk with Anna Yip and Sayali Bharambe.