Q: How do you find the paradigm shifts, the really big changes that even the customer doesn’t know they want yet?
A: Or they may know they want, but they can’t verbalize it yet.
Two things. And we teach our people how to do this. One is to spend time observing customers. I love market research. It’s nice. But even better is to go out and watch with your own eyes customers or prospects in their native environment; in their home or in their office. Watch what they do and ask them about what they do and don’t do.
As you do this, second point, savor surprises. Be open for the unexpected. Look for the unexpected. What didn’t make sense? What didn’t agree with the paradigm that we all have in our mind? Because it is those surprises that typically are the market speaking to you about a problem they have that we haven’t discovered yet.
Transcribed from Nir Eyal, "Scott Cook, Founder of Intuit," iinnovate podcast, 28 Apr 2008, (quote starts at 15:30), iinnovate.blogspot.com/2008/04/cook.html
