Michael Distefano on customer-centricity
From Designing a Customer-Centric Business Model · · Harvard Innovation Labs
“Your most important guide to anything you do is your customer. Period. End of story — don't take anything for granted; ask your customers if you're disrupting too much at once.”
On , Michael Distefano, Chief Executive Officer of Professional Search & Interim and President of Search Innovation & Delivery Team at KORN FERRY, spoke about customer-centricity during Designing a Customer-Centric Business Model on Harvard Innovation Labs.
About Michael Distefano
Michael Distefano, Chief Executive Officer of Professional Search & Interim and President of Search Innovation & Delivery Team at Korn Ferry, has spoken publicly on business model design, talent strategy, and leadership during crises. In a 2023 talk on customer-centric business models, he argued that a disruptive business model can be more impactful than technology or marketplace alone, and advised founders to focus on a "minimum viable segment" and create "slippery" products that are simple to use and low-cost. He also discussed the importance of using pre-hire assessments to validate "gut feel" in hiring, stating that 70% of companies do not use such tools, and cited research that 93% of decision-making is based on experience rather than content. Distefano has also addressed topics related to faith, identity, and social justice. In a 2022 sermon, he spoke about the Christian identity being defined by "proximity to the king" and urged listeners to be "proactive in our pursuit of the hurting, of the lost and of the forgotten." He referenced the surgeon general's 2015 finding that loneliness is worse for health than smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and noted that modern slavery is a $150 billion industry. In a separate podcast appearance, he discussed building alternative technology infrastructure, including an email service called Fidei Email, which he described as "email for the faithful" and a "beachhead" for broader technological development outside of major tech companies.