Anticipating Your Customers Needs

In The Importance of Anticipating Your Customers Needs Daniel Burrus takes a look at IT advances and advocates for a new perspective when working with customers:

...we are at the base of a curve of unprecedented transformational change powered by the exponential advances in processing power, storage, and bandwidth.

So you have to ask yourself, "As an organization, am I being left out...or am I going to start paying attention to the exponential changes...and what that allows me to do?"

...we tend to ask customers, "What would you like?" and then we give it to them. But...customers will always under-answer. Why? Because they don’t know what’s technically possible...nobody ever asked for an iPod, an iPhone, or an iPad, yet Apple has done quite well.

...focus on the more important question..."What would customers really want to do if they only knew they could do it?" Then, look at the rapid advances in processing power, storage, and bandwidth and ask yourself, "Could I give it to them?"