Thus, to develop business strategy, the firm must think about its positioning not only in
terms of its competitors, but also in terms of its customers, suppliers, and potential “complementors.” The firm must develop and nurture an integrated value chain, paying particular
attention to those firms whose products and services complement its products and services,
with the intent of working closely with those firms to provide better solutions to customers
than any other set of firms can. Underlying this system-level view of the firm’s business environment is a clear understanding of the customers and users of the firm’s products or services.
Keeping an Eye on the Customer
For over 30 years, research on the success and failure of products has shown lack of understanding of customer and user needs to be a critical failure mode (Rothwell 1972, Zirger
and Maidique 1990). Today, increasingly, we appreciate that understanding customers is
core to strategy development and execution. There are many different frames in which one
might look at customer and user needs. The Kano Method (Stein 1996) recognizes the