Chapter 3
Customer-Inspired Innovation
Some people say, “Give the customers what they want.” But that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do.
—Steve Jobs, cofounder of Apple
The customer foresight discipline is really about customer-inspired innovation. The quote from Steve Jobs gets to the essence of this competency—imagining solutions to problems even customers do not know they are experiencing.
This is a challenging discipline to master because it requires blending a deep understanding of the customer’s environment with knowledge of the organization’s technical competencies.
Many companies try ...
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