This example highlights a simple point: the choice of customer and the choice of products or services are strategic choices. It is the company's strategic responsibility to decide who will be its customer and what products it will offer that customer. Unless the company has unlimited resources, it cannot be everything to everybody. The world's best universities understand this: every year they decline to accept as "customers" more than 80 percent of those who want to "buy" their product. In this sense, they are exercising one of the greatest powers any organization hasthat of selecting its customers strategically.