Theodore Levitt

Levitt was born in 1925 in Vollmerz. A decade later his family moved to Dayton, Ohio. He served in World War II, received his high school diploma through correspondence school and then earned a bachelor's at Antioch College and a Ph.D. in economics at Ohio State University. His first teaching job was at the University of North Dakota.

In this theory, Levitt explains how many times companies focus so much on their product that they forget the market and customers. To understand this, Levitt, develops several examples:
According to this theory the railway companies did not cease to grow because people no longer had the need to travel, because this need was not covered by other means of transport (cars, planes, including wireless ..) but because these companiesassumed to be in the railroad business, not the transportation business.
Something similar happens with the Hollywood industry to define their business market so wrong, they thought they were in the movie business but where are theirmarket really is in the entertainment business. That is why they saw the arrival oftelevision as a threat rather than an opportunity to enlarge the entertainment market.

In 1959 he joined the faculty of the Harvard Business School. Later that year, he became world renowned after publishing Marketing Myopia in Harvard Business Review where he asks "What business are you in?", a phrase that demands one account for the significance of the job one does. Theodore Levitt (n. Vollmerz, Main-Kinzig-Kreis, Germany. March 1, 1925 - Belmont,Massachusetts June 28, 2006) was the American economist and professor at the prestigious Harvard Business School (Cambridge, Massachusetts). Business magazine editor also Harvard Business Review (HBR) where he published his famous article. It was the first theoretical economist to coin the term globalizationfocused on economic standpoint.