The phrase “It’s not the customer’s job to know what they want” is often attributed to Steve Jobs.

This highlights the role of innovation and visionary thinking in bold businesses and forward-looking entrepreneurs.

Here is how I see it:

1. Innovation Over Demand: Customers often base their desires on existing products and solutions. They might not imagine possibilities beyond what they know. Innovators, on the other hand, envision groundbreaking solutions that customers might not initially realize they need.

2. Customer Feedback is Limited: While customer feedback is valuable, it usually reflects their experiences with current products. They might suggest incremental improvements rather than radical innovations. Bold development companies need to look beyond these suggestions to create truly transformative products.

3. Visionary Leadership: Bold companies often have bold leaders who can anticipate future needs and trends. They create products that shape the market rather than simply respond to it. The “Innovation Accelerator” approach can lead to the development of revolutionary products that redefine industries.

4. Balancing Act: While it’s crucial to innovate, it’s also important to understand customer pain points and preferences. The key is to balance visionary ideas with practical insights from customer behavior and feedback. This balance helps ensure that new products not only excite customers but also meet their underlying needs and overcome pain.

5. Show and Tell: Customers cannot comprehend how you would solve their problems using products until you show it to them. Clickable Prototypes, Figma or Miro are a good way for them to touch, feel or collaborate with the proposed solution. But by the time you build what the customers think they want, they want more and sometime new. It is important to use collaborative ways to keep gaining customer insights and iterating on your product.

Examples of Successful Innovations:

Many of the most successful products were not directly demanded by customers. For instance, the iPhone combined multiple functionalities into one device, creating a market for smartphones that didn’t exist before. Similarly, platforms like X, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram created new ways for people to connect and share, leading to the rise of social media as a major part of modern life.

In essence, businesses should not rely solely on customer demands to drive innovation.

They should aim to understand the broader context of user needs and use that insight to create innovative solutions that customers may not yet realize they want.

ISHIR’s Innovation Accelerator is a powerful approach to uncover customer pain, learn what users love, delight them and make them raving fans of your product. This helps our bold startup founders to get their product right from the start.