Henry Ford's Customers

Didn't Want A Faster Horse

Henry Ford’s famous quote serves as a battle cry to many a visionary entrepreneur who swears against asking customers what they want.

”It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”

- Steve Jobs

There is often a gap between what focus group participants say and do, small samples can’t be generalised, participants have varying motivations, introverts lose their voice and group leaders can influence the direction of discussions.

SO WHAT IF YOU’RE NOT BLESSED WITH STEVE JOBS’ VISION?

Most entrepreneurs must instead rely on the ability to identify problems and find cheap and quick ways to test and iterate on the underlying assumptions in order to get to product market fit before the well runs dry.

These entrepreneurs don’t start off with a grand vision.

Oftentimes they start off with what they think is a problem and what they think a solution to that problem might be and iterate from there.

So, what did it really mean if customers had said that they wanted faster horses?

Closer inspection of Ford’s quote reveals something a lot more profound, particularly for innovators and product managers.

Ultimately, Henry Ford did give his customers exactly what they wanted. He gave them faster

transportation.

Faster transportation was essentially their ‘job to be done’ and getting to this answer might have been as simple as asking why they wanted a faster horse.

Knowing what the underlying problem and need is gives entrepreneurs a much higher chance of success in developing a solution that fills that need.

It sounds simple but given that more than 90% of startups fail, perhaps the concept isn’t widely acknowledged, understood or adopted.

SO HOW DOES ONE IDENTIFY JOBS TO BE

DONE?

1. Question, Observe,

Network and Experiment

According to The Innovator’s Method, we must first question, observe, network and

experiment.

Engage and think broadly.

Ask questions of customers, co-workers, suppliers, partners, family, friends and so on. Ask open-ended questions. Ask why.

Network aggressively with people from inside and outside your industry. Read lots of different blogs and magazines. Step outside of the realm of familiarity and get interested in lots of different subject matter.

Being able to think laterally and draw examples from one industry that can be applied in another, often lends itself to innovation. These tools will put you in a position to better identify potential problems to be solved

2. Painstorming

Painstorming, is used to map the customer journey, identify pain points, root causes and assumptions underlying key problems.

Begin with your problem hypotheses using jobs to be done, perform root cause analysis and focus on key assumptions underlying the root causes.

3. Walk In Your Customer's ShoesNo technique helps you understand your customer's pain points better than walking a mile in their shoes. Truly immerse yourself in the day in, day out activities of your customers. Doing so should reveal lots of insights, potential opportunities and give you a better appreciation for the size of problems.

4. Problem and Solution Discussion

Once you have an idea of what the problems facing your customers are and a relative idea of your solution, discuss this with your customer.

Show them what you think the key problems are, get them to rank the problems and confirm whether or not you’ve missed any major pain points.

When you’ve done that do the same with your solution. It’s important that you have a firm grasp of the problems you’re trying to solve, the magnitude of the problem and what the reaction to your initial solution hypotheses is.

What you are ultimately looking for is a pain that is big enough (i.e. affecting more than enough people to build a sustainable and scalable business on) and a solution that solves this problem for less than what it costs to deliver.

Instead of building products that nobody wants, take the time that’s necessary up front to walk a mile in your customer’s shoes, gain a true appreciation for customer pain points and then think about developing a solution. You might just end up saving yourself a lot of time, money and heartache.

Steve GlaveskiSteve Glaveski is co-founder and Chief Innovation Consultant at Collective Campus. Steve spent time working at the likes of Macquarie Bank, Ernst & Young and KPMG, before embarking upon his own entrepreneurial journey, founding Hotdesk, an office sharing platform with almost 1,200 locations across AsiaPac. Steve is also a startup mentor, innovation writer, and keynote speaker, and is also a board member of AgTech, a federal government funded initiative driving agricultural innovation.

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