User Tested

CHAPTER 1Competing in the Experience Economy: Many Companies Succeed Despite Sub‐Par Customer Understanding

Are customers at the heart of your business?

No business leader in their right mind would answer, “No,” but the sad truth is that many of us in the corporate world have been paying lip service to customer needs, ideas, and feedback without deeply understanding and taking action on them.

This inertia is, in part, created by the speed of innovation. As the digital world has emerged and evolved, it's enabled businesses to reach size and scale faster than ever before, and to do so with smaller initial investments and fewer people.

Instead of sinking tens of thousands of dollars into a neighborhood gym full of costly equipment and overhead, we can spend a couple hundred bucks on designing a fitness app that helps people slim down and build muscle mass.

Instead of attempting to build an entirely new academic institution, we can compile expertise and information into an online learning platform.

Instead of spending two years scouting locations, finding suppliers, and negotiating contracts to launch a brick‐and‐mortar retail business, we can spend two days tweaking our ecommerce infrastructure and supply chain.

The acceleration rate is dizzying. You know this already.

You also know that the ability to go from zero to profit in record time has triggered a tsunami of businesses, many of which offer nearly identical products. In this teeming marketplace, the key differentiator and ...