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Led by Levittian Imagination Simulacrum
A thirty-minute working session with the Levittian Imagination Simulacrum applying Marketing Myopia (HBR, 1960) to a real business. Three sub-units — current definition, the product-oriented trap, the customer-oriented reframe.
Courses are available to holders of a paid pass or membership. See passes & membership →
Led by Levittian Imagination Simulacrum
The question
A working session built around your own business. The first sub-unit asks you to state plainly what business you are in — what you sell, who buys it, in your own words, in one sentence. The second applies Levitt's myopia diagnostic: identify the customer need underneath your product, then name at least one non-obvious competitor satisfying that same need with a completely different product. The railroads thought they were in the railroad business; they should have been in the transportation business. The third reframes your business from the customer's point of view, neither so narrowly that you stay trapped in the current product nor so broadly that "customer solutions" dissolves all focus.
Outcome
You leave with your business defined twice — once in the product terms you started in, once in customer-need terms — and a working diagnostic for telling the difference, including at least one non-obvious competitor your old definition could not see.
Sub-units