Scroll down for the full video. The transcript below is taken from a video in which Steve Jobs explains the importance of market research. Image by Mathieu Thouvenin.
“Interviewer: How important is market research? How much did you rely on it in the early days?
Steve Jobs: Well, I think in the early days it was very easy because you would go to a homebrew Computer Club meeting and there was your home market. So you showed them your product and see what they thought. You could do that because the products were much simpler. Then within a few months you could change it all around and come back with a new prototype.
But as the market got more sophisticated it was less easy to do that.
The problem is that market research can tell you what your customers think of something you show them or it can tell you what your customers want as an incremental improvement on what you have. But very rarely can your customers predict something that they don’t even quite know they want yet. As an example no market research could have led to the development of the Macintosh or the personal computer in the first place.
So there are these sort of non-incremental jumps that need to take place where it’s very difficult for market research to really contribute much in the early phases of the thinking.
However once you have made that jump, possibly before the product is on the market, it is a great time to go check your instincts with the marketplace and verify that you’re on the right track.”