08-18-2026IMPACT COUNCIL

Why good design fails inside most companies

Companies lose insight into customers in the handoffs between those gathering insights and those shipping the product.

[Photo: Getty Images]

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Most companies believe they understand their customers. They run research, track behavior, and gather feedback at scale. Yet products still reach the market feeling disconnected from the way people actually live. The original insight was there. It just became a little less clear each time it passed from one team to the next.

This happens because research is gathered in one place, interpreted in another, handed off to a team working under different constraints, and revised again before anything reaches production. At each stage, the original understanding gets simplified into something easier to communicate. What remains is usually directionally correct, but less precise, stripped of the specificity that made the original observation meaningful.

The most obvious place this shows up is in how a product is described versus how it is designed. A brand might begin with a genuine insight: The home should work for the body across a full life,........

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