A lot of business ideas are born from the same mentality. We make assumptions about what people want based on what we think we know to be true, rather than on what could be.

Every successful business creates a new kind of customer. That customer’s story changes because the business exists. There is a before-the-product story and an after-the-product story. The change that’s brought about doesn’t have to be as monumental as the changes that companies like Google create; they can be small shifts in attitude and perceptio

The solution lies in following a principle that management consultant Peter Drucker spoke about decades ago: ‘the purpose of business is to create and keep a customer’. Drucker goes as far as to say that the customer is the ‘starting point’ of a business’s purpose.

Because car ownership is not common in China, IKEA stores are built in city centres. ‘And in a region where “do-it-yourself” furniture concepts were practically unheard of prior to IKEA, the company offers far more delivery and assembly options than it does anywhere else in the world.’

The two most important things we can do are to allow ourselves to be seen AND to really see others. The greatest gift you can give a person is to see who she is and to reflect that back to her. When we help people to be who they want to be, to take back some of the permission they deny themselves, we are doing our best, most meaningful work.

What companies and entrepreneurs sometimes forget is that the purpose of innovation is not simply to make new, improved products and services; it is to make things that are meaningful to the people who use them.

we forget to think about the story we will ask the customer to believe when the product launches, and so we miss an opportunity to make the product or service better.

As I worked with clients, I kept hitting on this same problem over and over again. They were working hard to bring ideas to market and enlisting my help with the storytelling part after the idea was fully formed; their first focus was almost completely on the idea itself when it should have been on the prospective user or customer. In fact, it woul

There’s a reason the IKEA catalogue comes in sixty-seven versions and thirty-two languages: the company knows that their products are worthless if they don’t fit the context in which customers will use them.