The DPV approach is meant to help organizations manage their businesses with a single-minded focus on achieving breakthrough profitable growth by deeply understanding current and potential customers, in their market context, and then profitably delivering clearly superior Value Propositions to them.

While not many managers would reject this deceptively simple idea, it does not actually describe the various conventional business cultures common today. Indeed, achieving a truly market-focused, value-delivery-driven organization is easier said than done, and for most organizations means deliberately changing the business-culture significantly. But from what? Where are most organizations today? Although a simplification, we believe that most of conventional business culture today can be divided into two broad types: the Internally-Driven and Customer-Compelled, both of which usually co-exist in various permutations within the same organization.

In the following pages, you can read descriptions of these cultural mindsets, and variations on them, and consider whether your organization exhibits some of these same traits today. Following this section, you can assess the extent to which your organization, for one business you choose to review, does explore the market and develop strategy in ways close to the DPV approach.