Internally driven businesses are everywhere

Over the past few months, for several reasons I have spoken with a number of businesses in technology, energy, and financial services which think that they know better than their customers what their customers want. It is fascinating to realize that the companies are each dedicated to serving their customers, but believe that because they are the expert, not the customer, they will decide what is good for them. I have seen this in many regulated businesses, where management and regulators each thinking that they should decide what the customer gets without listening to the customer. So the dissatisfaction is high and we wonder why.