The one thing every successful idea needs

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

Those words, often attributed to Ford Motor Company founder, Henry Ford, actually may not have even been spoken by the 20th century’s most successful industrialists, but (suspending that argument for one moment) the implication of what was said, that people often have no idea what they want until you give it to them, still creeps into even the most well intended product teams, innovation sessions and design sprints.

But, is this such a bad thing? Is it such a crime to ignore the customer and just ‘get shit done’.

Do teams do their best, most creative, most innovative work when released from the mantra of ‘the customer is always right’?

Yes and no.

Steve Jobs often set the keyboards of design purists and marketers on fire with his cavalier attitude to customer research, most famously summed up in this quote.

“‘Give the customers what they want.’…but that’s not my approach…people don’t know what they want until you show it to them…our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.”

In some ways he had a point, would the telephone and the modern assembly line ever have seen the light of day if Alexander Bell and Henry Ford had sat waiting for people to tell them what to do next?

Does an unrelentingly focus on continually listening to and giving customers what (they think) they want cause a kind of ‘innovation inertia’, distracting us from doing our most creative, transformative, unrestricted work.

Take one of this century’s most successful products, the iPhone.

The first-generation iPhone was released over 12 years ago, on June 29, 2007. A product that has gone on to sell over 2 billion units, generating almost 50% of Apple’s $258.5 billion in revenue and creating 1000’s of products and services that feed on our appetite for connection andentertainment.

If asked in Apple’s product development meetings in the early 2000’s, would customers have clearly articulated their need for what would become the iPhone? In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s peoples minds were still being blown by 2.2inch screens with 65k colour, Snake and 50mb of storage. If Steve had asked the people what they wanted back then Apple would probably still be trying to make the Newton a big deal.

But what the iPhone did was give people something they didn’t consciously know they needed, fulfilling all but one tier of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the motivational theory in psychology comprising a five-tier model of human needs, often depicted as hierarchical levels within a pyramid.

Relative to what we can do now, the first iPhone didn’t do much at all. You could listen to music, watch videos, check your email, take a photo and browse the internet (oh and apparently you could also make calls and send messages). There was no Pokemon Go, no Instagram, no Whatsapp, even Facebook was barely a ‘thing’.

The iPhone was not born from months of intense interviewing, focus groups and product strategy sessions, it’s initial features and functions were not painstakingly ideated, roadmapped, designed and developed to meet the whims of a select group of customers squirrelled away in a dark room in Cupertino.

But, still the iPhone delivered on almost all of our intrinsic psychological needs and desires.

From the second level ‘safety needs’ such as personal security, emotional security and financial security, the iPhone gave its users an instant connection to almost anyone in the world — providing an immediate sense of being able to connect with whoever, whenever and wherever either through a simple phone call or having the entire world at your fingerprints via mobile internet.

The third level of ‘social belonging’ was satisfied by becoming the tool to help overcome loneliness and social anxiety, simply by becoming the technological equivalent of a child’s comfort blanket — an always on device for social connection or just simple distraction.

The fourth level of ‘self esteem’ needs was satisfied by the immediate ‘social currency’ that came from even owning the device in the early days of release but also by becoming a source of knowledge and learning that could immediately enrich a personal conversation and provide a source of intelligent reference.

The final level of ‘self actualization’ is where the iPhone really came into its own. This level in Maslow’s hierarchy refers to the realization of one’s full potential — an individual desire to accomplish everything that you can, to become the most that you can be. This could be a desire to become an ideal parent, a better athlete, to create, to invent.

Of course the limitations of the first iPhone did not open up all these possibilities (unlike the opportunities offered just 3 years later with the iPad) but it certainly laid the foundations for self actualization — the simple ability to more conveniently take photos, write notes, browse the internet, listen to music, watch video etc etc — all this helped turn a morning commute or an evening jog into an opportunity for learning, enrichment and an additional sense of accomplishment.

So ok, maybe Steve really didn’t need to discover what his customers ‘thought’ they needed but it seems 1000’s of years of human behaviour had already discovered that for him.