Danger signals are outside customer base

When a corporation starts, its members rush to find customers, to meet their needs, to iterate, to create, to re-invent. As the business grows, they search for more customers with the problem their product/service solves. As their customer base expands, they tailor their solution to their customers needs. If their customers' needs change, they modify their product to match. One might think this cycle would continue forever. The slow, business-killing changes happen, not among one’s own customer base, but with those who are not even customers - the ‘noncustomer’ (Drucker, referenced by Krames, pg. 95).

Drucker puts it, “The first signs of fundamental change rarely appear within one’s own organization or among one’s own customers.” An established business may become so focused on serving its customers that it becomes oblivious to new opportunities or threats in the marketplace. Like the many companies whom new technology sunk (Kodak, Nokia, Blackberry), there is a danger for a company to grow insular to the wider marketplace. It can forget that noncustomers' decisions does affect their business, even if it’s not listed on in their bottom line.

When a new way of doing things arises, it’s not one’s loyal customers who are likely to make a change. People in general don’t like to change, and if you only measure your business' success by the dedication of your customers, without taking into account whether new or different customers are using your product/service, you may find that you’ve been passed by the next entrepreneur.

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