Recently I was a member of team reviewing how to strategically grow an area of a business. At first my take on this was to go out create a focus group ask questions, observe behaviors and take notes. This feedback I hoped would be what was needed to move our current product model to the next level.
As with this article sometimes you really don’t want feedback as the customer limits your innovation and potential growth. After all most customers are quite comfortable with what they have now and as we know it change is always resisted. This quote from Henry Fords sum it all up – If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.
The trick is to determine what customers really want without directly asking them, along the lines of “what if” you could do this questions. Role play within your peers to determine start to end and replay again to recheck all the steps.
I do hope you enjoy reading this as much as i did.
Why Steve Jobs Didn’t Listen to His Customers
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Interesting Andrew. I too found that while I listen to what everyone has to say, sometimes you just need to have a vision of what may be possible and go with that! Love the Henry Ford quote.