Growth and sustaining a product or service always come back to solving customer problems. Doing this well isn’t just a contest of technology or talent. It’s often about who is doing a better job of listening to their customers. Some call this “strategic empathy.” This can become a challenge as businesses grow, and as markets quickly change. So if you want to build a successful product or service, understanding your customer is paramount. In this talk, we will explore the ways that we can make data-informed decisions, and use design thinking tools to better understand our current customers and our future customers. And you don’t have to be a designer to use design thinking tools and techniques. We’ll see some real-world examples from companies like Ancestry.com, Bluehost, and others. And we’ll be sure to leave some time for a discussion on how this kind of thinking might help your business scale its ability to listen.