In The Washington Post’s article about the acquisition of the Post by Jeff Bezos, he was quoted as telling a small group of Post reporters that all businesses “need to be young forever,” and that “If your customer base ages with you, you’re Woolworth’s. The No. 1 rule has to be: Don’t be boring.”

He also emphasized three things that have worked well for him at Amazon: “Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient.” Any industry and any business can benefit from remembering these lessons from a company that has continually reinvented itself since its start in 1994 as an online bookstore in a world where such a thing was largely unimagined.

Are you shifting your services to meet the needs of an aging customer base, or are you continually reinventing to meet the needs of the newest generation of customers in your markets? You probably need to be doing both. Giving a hard look at your products and services to evaluate them with fresh customer eyes can be painful, but it is critically important. Give it a try. You might start to see a need to invent something new.

Click here for the full article, dated Sept. 4, 2013, by Steven Mufson