Where are customers in the mind of corporations?

Where are customers in the mind of corporations?
the answer is simple : they are in the market there and corporations are working their best to target them. Some may think that corporations are targeting them by offering them their products. Well, that is right , but some corporations are targeting customers in a way that they are shooting them and their innovations. This can be in a form of "we know what the customers want" or late customer involvement in the product/service development , if any.
the numbers mentioned in MIT paper regarding the consumer-centered-innovations are shocking , for example , in UK, individual spends money on R&D 140% more than the corporations do on R&D !
I consider this demand changing the R&D from usually a division of most of the companies to something that is far different.
I strongly believe that we are in a time where organizations that does not keep their customers heavily involved in all the business's stages, they are far from being stable and are deemed for failure.
Ideally , when 2 persons are thinking together, the outcomes should be better than when only one person thinking about the same thing , but that when not taking all the inter-people destructive forces into considerations. Because we people are not that good at cooperating and exchanging thoughts , some times individuals' R&Ds are able to easily beat big corporations' ones.