How Do You Do This?

Let's say you start with a personal experience you think could be improved, made current, or even approached from a different direction and you say, "We're going to design a superior customer experience; that's the starting point." Then you design an organization to design the product or service and deliver the experience. That's what Cirque du Soleil did.

It's what Alice Waters did when she got the idea for Chez Panisse, which has been rated the #1 restaurant in America by Gourmet magazine and consistently stays near the top of their list. She was nominated as one of the ten most important people in food by the French, and she's American. It all started for her when, as a student at U.C. Berkeley, she spent a year abroad and got immersed in the culture of Paris and Provence. There she came to understand how food is really about the experience of the community gathered around the table, and that while the food should at least be good, the experience extends from the local growers, enhanced by culinary skills to the pleasures of the table and good companionship. In this tradition, you couldn't say "what's for dinner" until you discovered what was available fresh that day when you went to market. That became the experience Alice wanted to consistently offer through her restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley, which opened its doors in 1971. How has this worked out? Almost four d....