You may have heard the (apocryphal) Henry Ford quote:
Personally, I think the quote is great, but it's a matter of interpretation.
The valid point of the quote is not that it's a bad idea to facilitate a conversation with your market to better understand it. The valid points are:
But in our conversations with customers, we shouldn't be focusing on features. We should be striving to understand the problems they face. They are not experts on the features or solutions; they are experts on their experiences and challenges. If we ask them what they "want", they are likely to think of solutions and short-circuit the all-important understanding of the problems they face.
The Henry Ford quote (whether he actually said it or not) is a stark and simple falsification of the notion that a direct poll of customers is sufficient to draw conclusions about features. We should not use the quote to dismiss the importance of listening to our market, however.
If you found this blog entry enlightening, you might also enjoy another one on five ways companies make product decisions.
If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have said "a faster horse".Over at the On Product Management blog, Saeed gives his take on this infamous quote. He "hates" it, and gives some compelling reasons. Saeed is spot on in his explanations.
Personally, I think the quote is great, but it's a matter of interpretation.
The valid point of the quote is not that it's a bad idea to facilitate a conversation with your market to better understand it. The valid points are:
- You must ask the right questions to get valuable answers.
- You must interpret the answers thoughtfully - often outside their direct meaning - to glean reliable information.
- Asking questions is not always the best way to "listen" to your market. (E.g., sometimes pure observational studies are more reliable.)
But in our conversations with customers, we shouldn't be focusing on features. We should be striving to understand the problems they face. They are not experts on the features or solutions; they are experts on their experiences and challenges. If we ask them what they "want", they are likely to think of solutions and short-circuit the all-important understanding of the problems they face.The Henry Ford quote (whether he actually said it or not) is a stark and simple falsification of the notion that a direct poll of customers is sufficient to draw conclusions about features. We should not use the quote to dismiss the importance of listening to our market, however.
If you found this blog entry enlightening, you might also enjoy another one on five ways companies make product decisions.
Comments
Henry Ford on Market Research
It will always require human discernment based on the situation, the problem, and the market. That's why product managers will never be replaced by robots. I hope.
Asked how much research and focus groups are done to guide apple when he introduced the iPad, jobs famously quipped, “None, it isn’t the consumer’s job to know what they want. It’s hard for consumer to tell you what they want when they have never seen anything remotely like it”.
-- Steve Jobs, Company-Apple, Sales-$108 billion, Market value-$546 billion
How to Talk to Customers Despite Henry Ford and Steve Jobs
I do agree the quote is useful for combatting so and so asked for it, we have to build it. But the dark side is people use it to argue that customers don't know what they want. And while that may be true, we still need to talk to them to learn what their needs are. We just have to ask the right questions.
The quote (apocryphal or not) teaches a vital lesson to product managers, but is definitely subject to misinterpretation.