Lets End This Debate

Technology Push or Customer Pull - what's the best way to create new products? The debate has gone on for years.

If I were to ask my academic friends, most would likely say that success is favored if you start with customer pull. Companies must produce products that customers want and failure to do so leads to disaster. No argument on that. History can provide many examples of products produced in the lab that flopped in the market. New Coke, IBM's PC Jr, and Apple's Lisa come to mind. Start with the customer and you'll make products that they want.

On the other hand, looking back through history, many blockbuster products have had their roots in capabilities (technology push), not in expressed needs. No one ever asked for a microwave oven, a VCR, an iPod (or it's equally breakthrough predecessor the Walkman), Post-it Notes, etc. A lot of companies have made a lot of money selling these products that were never asked for by the customer (I contend that the underlying needs are discernable through ethnographic research, but that's a topic for another post).

Asking customers what they want doesn't usually lead to breakthrough products. Customers usually ask for better, cheaper, or faster versions of current products, and there's certainly nothing wrong with that if that's what's needed in your portfolio. However, as Henry Ford once said, "If I had asked customers what they wanted, I would have built a better horse".

So it's clear that success can come starting point, so what's the secret?

In most cases, success comes about from an iterative approach wherein customer insights are sought, acted upon (in the development of the product), and the solution is then tested with the customer thereby producing greater insights. When the cycle has been completed a number of times - a match between the customer need and the provided solution is made and the product will likely meet with demand in the marketplace. So, as a colleague once stated - "this (iterative cycle of customer/solution) is like a merry-go-round, you need to go round and round a number of times and by time you do, it doesn't really matter where you get on".

So, let's end the debate. We've got far more important things to do.