What do consumers want?
A big theme during the upcoming conference will be how users innovate and how innovation increasingly takes place across previously closed boundaries. This made me think about the time when Steve Jobs was asked about what type of phone we will be carrying with us in five years. Jobs replied that he did not know. The place was the D5 conference in 2007 and Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher had managed to convince both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs to appear together on the same stage. Microsoft and Apple are two companies that over the years, in somewhat different ways, have been good at supplying the market with new products. Of course Microsoft is the company that found the right business model whereas Apple continues to lead product innovation by design and the beautiful and user-friendly products that the people in Cupertino come up with. But why did Steve Jobs reply that he did not know? After all, he is often considered as a visionary leader. It would seem likely that the reason is that it is immensely difficult to know what consumers want due to the problems of obtaining this information. As a result, only 1 out of 4 products that are put on the market is successful. Companies thus have a lot to gain from incorporating the user in the innovative process. But it also means that there is room for strategic action. To understand this we can simply ask ourselves how many of us that ten years ago expected to have our entire music collection in our mobile phones. Or for that matter GPS. So, perhaps Jobs does know...
About Fredrik Häglund
Researcher from School of Economics and Management at Lund University within the area of innovation management. His special interest lies with high-tech and dynamic industries, especially platform competition. He also runs his own company.
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September 9th, 2009 - 15:45
Consumers know what they like and like what they know, so it’s questionable just how innovative they are. Innovation has it’s sources in many different areas of society. It can be argued that innovation happens as a result of a need for a better solution. Asking consumers is not the answer. Observing their behaviour, is perhaps a way to a solution. But it is a combination of actions and skills that prompt incremental innovation. Today, some of the innovation taking place with the most impact, is business model innovation, look at Itunes. Something we will hopefully hear more about at the conference.