Meaningful solution

What are the consumers really paying for? The technological product? Or the meaningful solution? While it certainly is important to have a good product based on sound technology, consumers take all this for granted. They are only interested in how your product will make a difference for them.

This is why you should focuses on the consumer. Don't ask them what they want! As long as the product or service doesn't exist, it is an impossible question to answer. Instead, analyse their unarticulated potential needs. We call this "meaningful innovation".

The tin can is a good example. It was invented in 1848, but it took 40 years for someone to get the idea of making a can opener. Meanwhile people used knives, axes and guns. Had they been asked, no-one would have said that what they wanted was a can opener. They didn't know it. If the can is the technological product, the can opener is the meaningful solution.