There’s always been a stream of thought that believes consumer research should be ignored, or maybe not conducted at all. Often these articles ( for example; this one, this one, and this one ) use Steve Jobs, and sometimes Jony Ive, as examples of successful innovators who didn’t seem to conduct consumer research. But I propose that on a closer look you can see that Apple under Steve Jobs based their product decisions on what was possibly the best consumer research imaginable.
Without a doubt, the results from consumer research can be wrong, misleading, or worse, make company risk-averse and their products mediocre. I have product successes that went against consumer feedback, and others that based every key decision on it. I think we all have at least some of Steve Jobs’ brilliance. But the hubris of believing that any individual is so brilliant that consumer input isn’t needed is far riskier to any company.
For argument’s sake, let’s say that Apple has two categories of products. The first are superior offerings in established product types. I would place their desktops and laptops in this group. The other, more relevant to my line of thought, are category-defining products such as the iPod, Apple Phone, Apple Watch, iPad, and Apple TV. Notice that I did not call this second group of products ‘all-new’ or that they were ‘category-creating’. Nor would I say that they were invented without any consumer research.
I believe is that Apple under Steve Jobs had two practices that enabled them to consistently launch category-defining products; 1) The ability to define how existing products needed to change in order to meet consumer needs, and 2) A technology platform structure that continually provided enabling technologies at their cutting edge, giving Apple an enormous competitive advantage.
I don’t believe that Steve Jobs nor Jony Ive created any products without any consumer research. In fact I believe the opposite, that they had extensive consumer research that had specifically defined their target market, identified the unmet need being fulfilled, basic performance requirement, and general sizing. It’s true that none of these insights were gained by conducting focus groups, purchase follow-ups (PFUs), or ethnographies. They didn’t need to because Apple had the luxury of evaluating competitive products that had launched before theirs. Before the iPod there was the Rio, before the Apple Phone there was Blackberry and Palm Treo, before Apple Watch there was the Pebble.
But not very many innovators have predicate devices which, due to technology limitations, fail to meet consumer needs (this is where Technology Platforms come in). The most effective innovators are Fast-Followers because they learn real-world market and consumer feedback from the companies that had spent significant resources to launch products. It’s important that companies attempting to create a new product category do one of three things: 1) Adopt a Fast-Follower model, 2) Conduct market research that replicates the real world friction of marketing, cost, and user experience, or 3) Budget for a short product cycle in order to Fast-Follow your own products.