Many people believe that customers cannot tell us what they want.

After all, they point out, Henry Ford famously said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have told me a faster horse.” This quote has been bandied about for decades as “proof” that customers cannot tell us what they want. And yet, while this line of thinking may sound convincing, it’s only half true. You see, the phrase “what customers want” can be interpreted in two very different ways.

If by “what customers want,” we mean what product or service features customers want, then Ford is absolutely right: customers cannot tell us what the best product or service features should be any more than patients can tell their doctors what the best treatment plan should be. It’s not their area of expertise.

However, if by “what customers want,” we mean what customers want to accomplish with a product or service, customers can tell us what they want. Just as patients can tell their doctors that they want to “heal a wound, clear up a rash, or regain movement in their shoulder,” customers can tell us what they want to accomplish, feel, and experience, too. And just as doctors conduct a thorough diagnosis of the patient’s condition to inform them the development of the best treatment plan, suppliers should learn how to conduct an effective customer diagnosis to inform the development of new or improved offerings as well.

It turns out people can tell us what they want if we ask them what they want to accomplish rather than asking them for product or service specifications. If we can keep this distinction in mind, we can turn innovation and growth into a repeatable business process. First, discover customers’ unmet needs, then generate new products or services ideas to satisfy those needs.

Companies that follow this disciplined approach dramatically unclog the front end of their pipeline by quickly eliminating a lot of bad ideas, reduce the time of development and the number of iterations, reduce the time to market, and dramatically increase success rates. You can too!

(A version of this article first appeared in The Business Journals, December 10, 2015)