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This phrase is part of the specialized jargon of a particular field. It doesn't matter what it sounds like to someone not in the field; they never use it. And i
by ggchappell 14y ago
This phrase is part of the specialized jargon of a particular field. It doesn't matter what it sounds like to someone not in the field; they never use it. And it doesn't matter what one might think it means; the people who use it need to learn what it means.
Similarly, "resistance" in electronics and "bond" in chemistry and "pitcher" in baseball and "election" in the politics of a democracy, etc., etc., have specialized meanings.
That said, as a native speaker of English, I find that most business jargon sounds inane. And "customer development" is no exception.
- smartial_arts 14y agoIt's the "learning" part that I had problems with. It just wasn't immediately intuitive that subject (customer) is being studied, not manipulated (i.e. "developed"). Those ones that you outlined - resistance and bond in particular - can be directly related to the phenomena they describe. With customer development, well at least for me, it's a two step process, very much akin to working with a clunky UI - "no, don't click here, it's actually not a button, scroll down here and then click".
- ggchappell 14y agoGood point. I guess I went too far. The usual meaning of "bond" (say) is not irrelevant. Some other word ("llama"?) could have been used, but wasn't, and for good reason. So we can add "customer development" to the list of terminology that does not fit the concept it describes. It joins many previous entries, including "vitamin", "malaria", "tree shrew", "lunar maria", and "resource acquisition is initialization".