The customer isn’t always right!

Henry Ford nailed it when he said “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses” Whilst there is speculation about whether he actually used that quote, the fact remains that potential customers were not asking for cars at that time.

The “customer is always right” is certainly a solid position to take in terms of delivering customer satisfaction and a great customer experience. BUT the customer does not always know what they don’t know when it comes to product innovation.

Accidental inventions that customers didn’t even know they wanted

The Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company in 1968 invented Post It Notes (3M). The idea for the Post-it note was conceived in 1974 by Arthur Fry as a way of holding bookmarks in his hymnal while singing in the church choir. He was aware of an adhesive accidentally developed in 1968 by fellow 3M employee Spencer Silver. No application for the lightly sticky stuff was apparent until Fry’s idea. The 3M company was initially sceptical about the product’s profitability, but in 1980, the product was introduced around the world. Today, Post-it notes are sold in more than 100 countries.

Saccharin, the oldest artificial sweetener, was accidentally discovered in 1879 by researcher Constantine Fahlberg, who was working at Johns Hopkins University. Fahlberg’s discovery came after he forgot to wash his hands before lunch, he had spilled a chemical on his hands and it, in turn, caused the bread he ate to taste unusually sweet. In 1884, Fahlberg obtained a patent and began mass-producing saccharin. The use of saccharin use became widespread when sugar was rationed during World War I, and its popularity increased further during the 1960s and 1970s with the manufacture of Sweet’N Low and diet soft drinks.

Apple knew what Nokia customers wanted

When Steve Jobs invented the iPhone, if he’d asked customers what they wanted from their mobile phone, they would never have said “I want a phone without the keypad that we all know how to use” or “Can you make a phone that is a lot bigger than the ones we’ve been using” and certainly not “I’ll pay twice as much for it as any other model on the market”.

Since the launch. the iPhone has changed Apple’s business dramatically. iPhone sales have risen strongly over the years, from around 1.4 million iPhones sold in 2007 to more than 216 million units worldwide in 2017. In total, Apple has sold more than one billion iPhones worldwide in 10 years from 2007.

Before the iPhone, if you used a Nokia in an advert, it had a better response rate by at least 30% more than any other phone, Nokia had 80% market share in Australia. After the iPhone launch Nokia reduced from a Global Market Share of 39% of new sales in 2009 to less than 7% in 2012 and now gets included as “others” in most statistics.  This was not driven by customer input, but by a restlessness and an innovative approach to product development.

Possibility Thinking – giving Customers what they don’t know they want

Of course, customer insights and feedback are a key input to any product innovation, but only one of many inputs. Expertise in terms of research, insights into global and local trends and a constantly restless and enquiring curiosity is required to drive the Possibility Thinking that gives rise to genuine Innovation.

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