Because the easy money has dried up, agencies have had no choice but to reorganize their operations to be more nimble and customer focused.

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The firm needs to be permanently focused on generation positive customer outcomes, not merely generating outputs.

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But if the firm is still imprisoned in the assumptions of shareholder capitalism, then the sales unit focused on noble customer purpose will be operating like an oasis in an unfriendly desert.

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However, for small businesses, self-employed people, or customer-focused individuals like insurance agents or financial advisers, it could be a really handy tool.

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So when they turned to biotechnology in the 1990s to help boost their flagging sales and offset high development costs, such companies focused on easy traits that would be of immediate interest to farmers, their traditional customer, rather than to food manufacturers or shoppers.

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What is new is making customer delight the driving force of everything the firm does (not just one of many things to be focused on) AND changing all the management roles, systems, values and communications to reflect that goal.

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"When they read it, they'll see that you can do things differently, be more product focused, " says Mr. Nirpaz, 39 years old, whose company builds software that monitors customer relations.

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