Dont ask your customers. Observe them.
Steve Jobs leads Fortune Magazine’s most admired company. He is revered for his ability to constantly bring to market, beautiful, innovative products.
I have tried to find reasons NOT to buy Apple products, as it started to feel like a habit – at one point sold them all on Craigslist, but slowly they are finding their way back into our apartment. First an iPhones, now a Macbook Air and soon Apple TV.
Anyway, much more interesting is a recent Fortune interview with Steve Jobs and some of the surprising things he had to say, for example: “We do no market research. We don’t hire consultants…”. No market research? Well, thats no quite true. He goes on to say that Apple builds things they (and there friends) will like. This seems decidedly un-researchy, but they do ask questions and so I guess this is still research.
Perhaps more important than asking questions, is observing. This seems to be Job’s greatest skill. “…it’s not about convincing people that they want something they don’t. We figure out what we want.”
And finally. a key insight on customers:”There’s a great quote by Henry Ford, right? He said, ‘If I’d
have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me “A
faster horse.” ‘ ”
The complete interview is available from CNN Money.
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