Today, in contrast, the number of customer options is dwarfed only by the amount of information available about each option. There has been a secular shift in power from the supplier to the customer. Highly competitive markets and abundant information have placed the customer at the center of the business universe. In this new environment,

when these two to three points are reinvested in R&D for new products, for lower-cost processes, or for service to the customers, the impact is multiplied tenfold.

installed base becomes a critical element of another high-profit model when it allows the owner to establish a de facto standard.

leave the land of illusion and return to entrepreneurial principles.

Unlike the customer development model, where customer economics is the most important factor, in a product pyramid profit model, customer preferences of style, color, price, and so on, are of utmost importance. The variations in customer income and preferences make it possible to build product pyramids. They exist in markets as diverse as

The product is the catalyst of the profit-producing reaction—it

In some industries, such as manufacturing and airlines, it is not the sale of the product or service that generates the profit, but the after-sale financing or service of the product.

The few companies that do use their access rarely take the critical next step: creating a privileged and often proprietary information flow from major customers—or, more importantly, from a truly market-representative cross-section of customers—to themselves. In today’s ultradynamic business landscape, this information flow could be one of a

• Who will be my most valuable customers? • How will their critical priorities evolve? • How must I reinvent my business design to take advantage of the new paths to profitable customer-centric growth?