Forget About Trying to Create Customer Needs
Many people believe that the most innovative companies create customer needs with breakthrough new products.
Nobody knew they needed an iPhone, the thinking goes, until Apple created the need for it. Hence, if you want to be an innovation leader, you should find ways to create customer needs.
Although this may sound reasonable, it is a common misbelief based on confusing customer needs with solutions. Great innovators do not create customer needs; they discover existing important unsatisfied needs, and then create solutions that address those needs dramatically better than any other competitive option.
For the purposes of innovation, the best definition of a customer “need” is a “task to be done.” Many readers are familiar with the late great Harvard Business School professor Theodore Levitt, who famously told his students that “People don’t want to buy a ¼ inch drill; they want a ¼ inch hole!”
Customer needs are separate from products
Levitt’s quote reveals a transformative truth that can make innovation and growth a predictable business process for leaders who understand it: customer needs are separate and distinct from the products and services people buy to address their needs.
The fact is, people can tell us what they want if we focus on what they are trying to accomplish rather than product or service specifications. People buy products and services to get their tasks done.
The drill is just a solution. Other solutions could be a punch, a pick, a laser, or some yet-to-be-invented tool. The task of making a hole is the true need, and it is just one step in executing many other larger tasks such as hanging a picture or beautifying a room.
But note that the need to hang a picture and beautify a room existed long before the drill was invented. Cavemen painted pictures on their walls to beautify their residence long before they learned how to drill holes and hang pictures.
So, it can be rightfully said that, although drill manufacturers did not create new needs, they did create demand for their drills by helping people get the pre-existing tasks (such as hanging a picture and beautifying a room) done better than any option before.
The iPhone did not invent communication
Consider the iPhone, which created millions of new customers when Apple introduced it in 2007. The iPhone was one of the first to use a multi-touch interface for direct finger inputs as its main means of interaction.
But before the iPhone, people already had the need to check email, make phone calls, find information on the internet, and do a myriad of other tasks that its apps enabled. The iPhone did not create these needs; it provided people with a new platform that enabled them to get these tasks done better than anything else before.
So, it can be rightfully said that, although Apple did not create any new customer needs, it did create demand for the iPhone by helping people get multiple tasks done better than any option before.
Similarly, Alexander Graham Bell did not create the need for remote communication when in invented the telephone. People have always had the need for remote communication. For thousands of years the best options were smoke signals, church bells, and signal lamps.
So it can be rightfully said that although Mr. Bell did not create any new customer needs, he did create demand for the telephone by helping people communicate remotely better than any option before.
People buy products and services to get tasks done
The same is true for the Walkman (people always had a need to take their music with them), the microwave (people always had a need to cook food) and every other breakthrough innovation. People buy products and services to get their tasks done.
The key to breakthrough innovation, differentiation, and growth is to discover your target customers’ important unsatisfied tasks to be done and address them better than anyone else. If your new product or service idea does not help target customers get an existing, important, unsatisfied task done better, it’s probably not going to succeed. People do not buy products and services that address problems they don’t have.
Do you know what tasks your customers are trying to get done with your offerings and which are important and unsatisfied?
(A version of this article first appeared in The Business Journals, November 22, 2016.)
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