The real test of understanding is if someone can take an idea in an new direction, which is sort of an application.

Let me come back to concretes before I range too far afield.

I was saying to someone that I was not blown away by Andy Grove and Lee Iacocca the way I was by Jack Welch and Sam Walton. Because I didn’t really see either Iacocca or Grove as a real customer-service icon.

I guess Welch maybe wasn’t one strictly either, but Six Sigma? - Delivering great quality and technology? Dell is also a great customer-service guy with a very broad expansion of his “customer” ideas (and the “buy direct” model). Bezos also distinguished Amazon this way.

So perhaps I’ve been taking for granted that CEOs an be customer-service / value oriented and now that I’m reading about Grove this is slightly more apparent.

Also in some ways the retail experience is different from other customer relationships.

I guess what really turns me on is the idea of creating great experiences for the customer - and very specific - that associate the company with a great experience. Is it possible to do it this way with, say, corproate clients? Is Dell, for example, although serving customers of whom he is a customer, even able to create those experiences?