Buyer- and person-centric services add value, and earn their keep, by helping individuals achieve their personal goals and improve their personal economics. This is in contrast to today's primarily seller-centric set-up which revolves around improving the economics of companies.

The person-centric perspective sees every individual as a business in his or her own right: a business that naturally wants to improve its performance and economics. (More on buyer-centric economics). For a two-minute slide presentation outlining buyer-centric basics, click here.)

As individuals, we are all involved in the business of making our own lives. To do so efficiently and effectively we have to do all the things that businesses have to do.

We have to:

  - set goals, define priorities, choose between alternative courses of action, make plans, administer processes
   - go to market to acquire and use the things we need to achieve our desired outcomes.
   - invest resources and assets (personal assets such as time, money, energy and attention) to achieve our desired outcomes.

We have to work hard to achieve these things, which means we value personal productivity.

And we have to do these thngs across many specialist departments such as ‘my home’, ’money’, ‘health’, ‘career’, ‘my communications and information, ‘my personal transport’, ‘my leisure and entertainment’, ‘my passions' (i.e. my hobbies and causes ) and so on.

We also have to do these things across a wide range of different life events such as births, marriages, divorces, death – and intermediate challenges such as moving home, changing careers and so on.

Buyer and person-centric services are designed and organised to help individuals do all these things better and more efficiently; to achieve richer life outcomes at lower personal and financial cost.

So what will buyer-centric businesses look like?

How will they cover their costs and become viable businesses?

And what implications does this have for existing organisations, both in the private and the public sectors?