I've often encouraged executives to pay attention to the customers' complete consumption chain rather than focusing just on what they do, sell or make. One of my colleagues forwarded me a fascinating article from the New York Times describing how retailers are doing this by helping customers get loans, provide financing or otherwise solve the problem that many of their customers just don't have the money to do business. Good food for thought – to think through what barriers to doing business are, and how they might be addressed.