Shifting the focus from product to customer

NEARLY 55 years ago, the Harvard Business Review published an article written by a then-young Harvard Business School lecturer named Theodore Levitt. The article, provocatively titled Marketing Myopia, warned of industry decline due to executives' own management failing. Mr Levitt said: "It is not surprising that, having created a successful company by making a superior product, management continues to be oriented towards the product rather than the people who consume it."

The myopia Mr Levitt referred to is the tendency of leaders and managers to see their companies as being in the business of making…