Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) is among the world’s fastest growing corporations. But there are signs that its leaders may be running the risk of committing the most dangerous strategic mistake the leaders of fast-growing corporations can make: Taking the customer for granted!

Too often with the excitement and enthusiasm that fast growth brings comes the mistaken belief that whatever it is you’re producing is unique and indispensable, and that customers will always be there for you. Leadership of a corporation in a situation like this can sometimes fall prey to greed -- exploiting every avenue to limit competition, even if it hurts their customers.

While this mind-set may have worked in the old days when corporations were at the center of the economic universe, it doesn’t apply any more. In today's world, customers occupy that position. With few exceptions, products are neither unique nor indispensable -- competition catches up quickly with even the fastest growing corporations.

What this means to your bottom line is this: if you fail to meet their expectations, or become greedy, your customers will search elsewhere for a better deal.

Here are four fast-growing corporations that have made such a mistake and suffered the consequences:

1.     McDonald’s (NYSE:MCD). In the 1990s, McDonalds experienced phenomenal growth and got carried away with it. How? By paying too much attention to the supply side of its business and too little attention to the demand side. In short, they focused on building new restaurants and buying up other food chains, and neglected to keep track of what a new generation of consumers wanted on the menu — more vegetables and less meat. Big mistake. Growth and profitability has declined, as consumers have searched elsewhere for value.

2 .   Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO). In early 2000, the company lost its customer-centric orientation. The company got obsessed with the product supply chain and distanced itself from its end customers. A case in point is The Flip video product line—a misguided acquisition that drove the company outside its core business. Then there was Cisco's  “edge” routers—Internet gear deployed to get closer to their own customers. Big mistake. By failing to focus on the end customer, Cisco has been losing market share to Juniper Networks (NYSE:JNPR), Alcatel-Lucent (nYSE:ALU), and Huawei Technologies.

3.     Research in Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM). For most of the 2000s growth was soaring for Research In Motion -- producers of BlackBerry smartphones. Each quarter the company delivered better than expected earnings results.  BlackBerries took over conventional phones—outperforming even Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL). But in the last two years, the company has failed to keep up with innovation. Big mistake. Rim’s customers have responded by dumping BlackBerry phones for iPhones.

4.     Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX). For the last three years, Netflix has been growing by leaps and bounds, luring movie viewers away from the video store and the cable TV to its video streaming and mail order bundle. Last year, the company tested the loyalty of these viewers by raising the price for its product. Big mistake. Subscribers have fled in droves for competing services.

Will Apple repeat this mistake? For almost a decade Apple has been competing the old free enterprise way: Churning out products that changed consumers lives, like MacBook, the IPod, the IPhone and the iPad. This was especially the case under Steve Jobs' leadership, a man who insisted that the customer was the beginning an end of everything the company did. Recently, however, there are indications that Apple has begun to move away from this business model. I’m talking about the prolonged litigation with Samsung, which in the end may hurt smartphone customers, as well as the company’s decision to drop Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) maps.

To be fair, I'm not saying Apple shouldn’t defend its innovations, especially after the victory it scored against Samsung. Nor am I advocating that Apple shouldn’t try to enhance shareholder value by promoting its own products. All I’m saying is that these strategies won't be much good to the company if they end up hurting the ultimate boss of the corporation: The Customer!

Here's the Bottom line. In a free enterprise system, the customer is the ultimate boss -- the Alpha and Omega of every process and everything you do. The most dangerous mistake you can make is to take the boss for granted.

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