“People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill.
They want a quarter-inch hole.”
Theodore Levitt, quoted in The Innovator’s Solution, sequel to The Innovator’s Dilemma, both recommended to me by John as I’m in the early stages of defining what a proposed product should do.

Timely reminder that customers “hire a product to do a job,” not to fill a slot on their shelf reserved for an artificial product category. (Of course they don’t really just want a hole; they want to build something, drain something, see through something, etc. We need to get down to real intents and desired outcomes, or we’ll never understand what we should build to meet real needs.)

posted by Ted Boren on Tuesday, Jun 09, 2009
tagged with design, requirements, innovation


1 comment

True dat.

comment by Nathan Philpot about a day later

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