I am nothing if not a consumerist. Meaning, I am constantly impressing upon the companies with which I work the importance of a deep and empathic understanding of customers past, present, and future. This is especially true if a company is contemplating a strategic shift that entails repositioning or refocusing its efforts to target new and different market segments.

Generally speaking, most companies are pretty good at getting out and rubbing elbows with customers to conduct the kind of ethnographic research that involves watching customers in their user habitat. The challenge that all of them have is turning their observations into insights that produce a new strategy and competitive advantage. Some are better than others at it, of course, and some are masters at it, but it’s always a challenge.

One of the things that has helped my perspective on this challenge is my fascination with all things neuroscientific. During the last half-decade, neuroscience has really come to the fore as a discipline that can help address this challenge.

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