The Experience-Centric Organization

Your company must traverse five stages to become “experience-centric,” like Apple.

Apple became the world’s first trillion-dollar business thanks to its experience-centric focus – a vision Steve Jobs first articulated in 1997. Jobs began with the consumer experience, and reverse engineered the company’s processes from there. Amazon also puts customer experience foremost in all its decisions, and works, continuously, to make that experience better. The two companies’ focus on their users’ experience sets them apart.

In the 2020s, companies that integrate experience centricity throughout their organizations will have an advantage over businesses that don’t, for three key reasons. Consumers now have more companies to choose among, so they select sellers based on their experiences with them. Branding has moved from offering a consistent message to creating consistent company-wide interactions with customers. The third element reflects the rise of the “experience economy,” which, increasingly, resides at the core of people’s lives. Since most products work as expected, people...