Why Listening to Customers is Not an Innovation Strategy
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The first thing a marketer should do is listen to customers, right? If the goal is innovation, Mark Cuban says the answer is no.
In an April 2010 blog entry, Mr. Cuban wrote a post titled “Why You Should NEVER Listen to Your Customers.” He quoted Alan Kay who said that “the best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
This is consistent with two other innovative thinkers – Steve Jobs and Paul Graham. Here’s what they had to say:
“It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” - Steve Jobs
“For [a product] to surprise me, it must be satisfying expectations I didn’t know I had. No focus group is going to discover those. Only a great designer can.” - Paul Graham
When developing a product, it’s easy to think that customers will lead you to the next great thing. If you can just get a group of them into a room and ask enough questions, you’ll discover the next great product.
According to these four innovative thinkers, that’s not the case. This is because most people don’t know what it is that they will want next. They know what they like or dislike about what products they currently use, but they can’t predict what they will want next.
In order to be innovative, companies need good designers, and they need to invent the next big thing themselves. This is what Apple does.
Apple invents the future. With the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad, Apple took each product category to another level. Instead of making the next standard mp3 player, smart phone, or tablet PC, Apple invented the future. They defined the market.
If companies want to catch up with Apple, focus groups aren’t the answer. Hiring great designers and spending more time and effort on innovative thinking will lead to the next great product. For innovation, listening to your customers is not the answer; inventing the future is.
Related Post:
Customer Feedack is Important for Incremental Improvements, But Not for Innovation
Sources:
Mark Cuban, Why You Should NEVER Listen to Your Customers, Blogmaverick
Steve Jobs, Quotations Page
Paul Graham, Quotations Page
We have made alot of mistakes, so maybe we are doing something. Keep moving ahead, something will work.
This is exactly the case with the evolution of smartphones. Ten years ago, who in the world thought about using the camera on a phone to scan barcodes and search for products within your area? Certainly not any of us customers. We just wanted a way to send an email with our phone. That's what we would've asked for. Not barcode scanners.
I recently purchased a Droid X primarily for the screen size. I have since discovered a plethora of uses for the phone I had never even thought of. And there's certainly more yet to find.
I do wonder though, does this principle assume that the innovator has already thought of all the things the customers might think of? Or does it rather imply that the customer's thoughts just aren't that useful?
Paul, this is a great question. So much so, that I answered it with a new post. Let me know what you think.
[...] in my last post I mentioned that listening to your customers is not a good innovation strategy. This may lead you to think that listening to your customers is a bad idea. Actually, [...]
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -George Bernard Shaw
Innovators therefore must by definition be unreasonable men.
Paul, Allow me to challenge your assumption that listening to the consumer is not the answer and that innovation is. Innovation is a result of listening to your customers and though that listening, understanding their needs. Apple's innovations succeed when they meet the consumer needs but do it in unexpected ways. Focus groups are like fire; when used to make final decisions you often get burned – use them to identify customers needs and they can be invaluable in feeding the innovators mind.
Andy, thanks for the challenge. I agree that there is a lot of value in listening to customers, especially after you launch a product or come up with an idea. The problem is that if you do it before that, customers are largely unreliable.
Smart phones are a great example. Prior to the first iPhone, if you asked people whether or not they would pay $500 to have the functionality of an iPhone, they would have said no. The functionality was cool, but people didn't know that they would pay $500 for it. That was just too much.
Because of this, most companies were afraid of making awesome smart phones. Customers "weren't ready for them." The problem is that they were. Customers just didn't know it.
Enter Apple with the iPhone and people threw gobs of money at Apple to buy the first and successive iPhones.
Do you see the difference? If you rely on what people think they want, you miss out on innovation opportunities that customers don't even know exist. What do you think?
[...] the end of October of last year I wrote about “Why Listening to Your Customers is Not an Innovation Strategy.” It was published at Entrepreneurdex as a feature article (thanks guys!), and it’s [...]