If a vertical business is your company’s power core, you have deep competencies in an area of business, such as hospitality or insurance. You are known in the marketplace because of this competency.
However, companies with a strong vertical business can lose sight of the customer along the way. The thing they are best at becomes the definition of the business. An understanding of customer needs is frequently internal: the people who are the practitioners believe that they know the business so well that they speak for customers. That’s a huge risk.
