A mere 20 years ago, a song typically stayed on the Billboard Top 100 charts for 20 weeks. Right now, it’s closer to two weeks. Similarly, the skillset that would once last your whole career now requires a complete refresh every three to five years. Corporate longevity is also rapidly changing: in 2020, the average company lifespan on Standard and Poor’s 500 was just over 21 years, compared with 32 years in 1965. It’s expected to fall even further throughout the 2020s.
Keeping Up with Customers’ Increasingly Dynamic Needs
Relevance is fleeting these days. Here’s what sets successful companies apart.
September 27, 2022
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Summary.
Over time, businesses have moved from a product-centric approach focused on performance to a customer-centric strategy meant to prioritize experience. But today’s dynamics are more complicated. Companies need to accept their customers as ever-changing, complex people deeply impacted by unpredictable external forces — an approach the authors call life centricity. Life-centric businesses are deeply attuned to the forces that most profoundly affect their customers’ lives, such as technology, health, and culture. They achieve relevance by bridging the interplay between these life forces and their customers’ everyday decisions. And they maintain that relevance by perpetually evolving their products, marketing, sales, and service experiences as life continues to shift.