Innovation... do customers know what they want?

Innovation ? Don't ask the customer

Look at this quote... "And Philippe Kahn demonstrated some sort of a digital camera that could actually take a picture and send it across a network. Get real. Maybe I'm jaded, but I don't care that he was sending it across a phone network, without downloading it to a PC first."

Isn't that just interesting to read? It was in 2001, reporting on a demo that Philippe Kahn did at JavaOne -- a demo of something we use all the time now - a camera phone. This was not that long ago, yet the feedback from potential users was "can't do that" or "I'd have no use for it, I've got a PC".

Just goes to show that some of the greatest ideas don't respond well to customers or even tech folks.

Interesting.....

Link to that demo : http://www.lightsurf.com/news/releases/ma_053101.html

Tags: Philippe Kahn, willspeaking, mobile, tech, innovation

Comments

Anonymous said…

Yeah, sometimes I wonder about this too... most of the time polling the masses will just get you status quo. With innovation I think the trick is to make it both intuitive and intriguing. So they are getting something they can understand easily or figure out quickly and yet it keeps them exploring or coming back for more... or I guess in Google's case is so useful they find no substitute.

But what do I know?

July 25, 2006 at 12:32 PM

Anonymous said…

You know alot kurt :-)

July 25, 2006 at 12:33 PM

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