The most important lesson that I learned from Steve Jobs, and I
learned many lessons from Steve Jobs, is that you cannot ask
your current customer how to create innovation, revolution to get to the next curve.
Your current customer can only express what he or she wants in
terms of what he or she is already getting from you.
So, if you're an Apple II owner and Apple asks you, "What do you want in the next computer?"
You would say, "Better, faster, cheaper Apple II."
You would not say "A Macintosh" because you can't frame that in your mind.
What is a Macintosh?
You can't describe what you've never seen.
And similarly, I would suspect that if Apple had asked Macintosh
owners, "What do you want in a phone or a Pad or a Pod?"
It would be difficult for a Macintosh owner to have described
that. And so that's the challenge that you could ask your
customers to tell you how to revise what they're already getting
from you, but you can't ask them how to get to the next curve.
