Recognizing that companies went bust when the market for their products dried up, Levitt set out to learn why. The manifesto he produced aimed to upend conventional wisdom that viewed a company’s product as paramount. Levitt saw the customer as central to the success of any business, and urged companies in every industry to look at their products from the customers’ point of view.

Theodore Levitt’s 1960 article “Marketing Myopia” is a business classic that earned its author the nickname “the father of modern marketing”. It is also a beautiful demonstration of the problem solving skills that are crucial in so many areas of life – in business and beyond.

The problem facing Levitt was the same problem that has confronted business after business for hundreds of years: how best to deal with slowing growth and eventual decline. Levitt studied many business empires – the railroads, for instance – that at a certain point simply shrivelled up and shrank to almost nothing. How, he asked, could businesses avoid such failures?

His approach and his solution comprise a concise demonstration of high-level problem solving at its best. Good problem solvers first identify what the problem is, then isolate the best methodology for solving it. And, as Levitt showed, a dose of creative thinking also helps. Levitt’s insight was that falling sales are all about marketing, and marketing is about knowing your real business. The railroads misunderstood their real market: they weren’t selling rail, they were selling transport. If they had understood that, they could have successfully taken advantage of new growth areas – truck haulage, for instance – rather than futilely scrabbling to sell rail to a saturated market.