Some people say, Give the customers what they want. But that's not my approach. Out job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, 'A faster horse!' People don't know what they want until you show it to them.
In the book "Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson, a key philosophy discussed is the idea of anticipating customer needs rather than just responding to their current desires. This perspective challenges the conventional approach of merely asking customers what they want, suggesting instead that innovators should predict future demands. Steve Jobs believed that many customers are unaware of their true desires until they experience a groundbreaking product that reveals those possibilities.
This viewpoint aligns with a famous quote attributed to Henry Ford, who implied that if he had only listened to what customers thought they wanted, he would have created a faster horse instead of the automobile. The essence of Jobs's approach is to push boundaries and show consumers innovative solutions that they never knew they wanted, thus driving the development of revolutionary products that redefine markets.