"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."
The Ford quote speaks to all of us who build things for our customers. I heard a better example of what you are trying to say at a training seminar several years ago: A product design guru was working with a design committee at Black and Decker on their new cordless drill. He asked them what their customers wanted and dutifully listed their features on the whiteboard – battery life, ergonomics, torque, variable speed… on and on. When he finished he stepped back and told them they were all wrong. "What do you mean, we have extensive market research…" No, he insisted, their customers buying drills don't want any of those things…. they want to put a hole in something. A nice, probably apocryphal story about thinking outside the box and delivering what the customer really needs. If you don't have your eye on the ball (meeting customers' needs) then you will miss the truly innovative leap – the real leap for Ford was understanding that they didn't want a faster horse, or to get more work done, what they wanted was to get themselves and their stuff from point to point faster and with less work. He solved that need with a mechanical replacement for the horse and wagon.
