Guiding Star for Volatile & Uncertain Environments
“If there is one thing that is certain in business, it’s uncertainty”
Stephen Covey
Industries have been disrupted with adaptive and nimble startups and the shelf life of ‘Cash Cows’ is diminishing due to the shorter product lifecycles. Many corporations and small and medium-sized businesses are in a dilemma on how to deal with the existing volatile business environment. Many of the businesses that are excelling within the same volatile situation have been developing a mindset of Customer Centricity.
Customer Centricity
Within his book Customer Centricity: Focus on the Right Customers for Strategic Advantage, Peter Fader states that “Customer centricity is a strategy that aligns a company’s development and delivery of its products and services with the current and future needs of a select set of customers to maximize their long-term financial value to the firm”. Successfully executing Fader’s definition of customer-centricity will no doubt lead to profitable & growing businesses. However, as with many beliefs & terminologies, there are numerous definitions proposed by authors, academics & entrepreneurs for customer centricity, I would like to look at the belief from an Agile perspective.