“We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.” — Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com founder

Entrepreneurs Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, founders of YouTube, built the business on a breakthrough observation about their customers: “What our users want to watch is themselves. They don’t want to watch professionally produced content.”

Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, writes: “Unless we’re in touch with our customers, our model of the world can diverge from reality. There’s no substitute for innovation, of course, but innovation is no substitute for being in touch, either.”

The Bottom Line: Leaders put their customers first, take time to understand their customers’ needs and design their products accordingly.