Innovation Henry Ford Innovation of Products and Essay

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Innovation

Henry Ford

Innovation of products and services:

'If I asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses' -- Henry Ford

Knowing the customer is critical when introducing innovative customer requirements. While conventionally-minded companies may survey customers, asking them what they think they want and need, ground-breaking companies try to anticipate consumer desire. That is what Henry Ford meant when he said: 'If I asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses'. Steve Jobs has also been praised for leading rather than following consumer's technological tastes, such as when he created smaller, portable music devices that could be easily carried when working out and did not 'skip' like old-fashioned CDs. The Apple iPad was much mocked, yet consumers lined up to buy this device that was smaller than a laptop yet larger than a PDA. When creating all of his devices Jobs famously distained market research (Barry 2011). Steve Jobs was a master of so-called lateral thinking and was an innovator who learned from his (few) mistakes (Chang 2010: 120). Combining different elements of different products like Jobs did (the smallness of a PDA with the capabilities of a laptop in the case of an iPad) can create new, synergistic thinking.

The example of both Ford and Jobs is illuminating because there are many parallels between the two innovative entrepreneurs. Neither 'reinvented the wheel' (no pun intended). Ford did not invent cars; Ford invented a way to make cars affordable to ordinary consumers. Jobs did not invent the personal computer, but he did create a computer that was uniquely intuitive in its operating system -- and he created a business model where the style of his computers was just as important as the substance and functionality offered by the Mac.

Instead of focus groups asking 'what do you want,' observing how users interact with the product is often more useful in establishing customer requirements that the customers themselves may not be aware of at present.

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Customers are simply that -- they may be able to critique the design of the product or service they are currently using, but they are not entrepreneurs and designers, and they may lack self-consciousnesses about their own habits. For example, Ray Kroc of McDonald's is reputed to have noticed how customers eating at his franchise were cleaning the bags of fries with their fingers. Thus, the idea for different sized fries was born, since he realized consumers didn't want to seem like 'pigs' asking for two bags of fries. Customers themselves would probably not say: "I would like more fries," in a focus group, for fear of seeming like overeaters. However, through observed interactions between customer and product, Kroc was able to gain a better sense of what customers really wanted.

This discrepancy is often particularly noteworthy in food services. For example, because the media tells them so frequently that they must eat more healthfully, consumers often say they want calorie counts on menus, and more healthy menu offerings. But when they walk into a restaurant, what they really order are burgers and fries. By keeping track of actual ordering patterns, some fast food chains and comfort food restaurants have been offering….....

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