The companies that make a real impact in the marketplace are not the ones that produce what people think they want, but rather the ones that produce what people will want but don’t know it.

The ability to know what people will want before they know it exists is not a result of intensive market research, focus groups, or telemarketing surveys. Knowing what people want is based on understanding the human condition: the motivating factors that move people from disinterest to action. Steve Jobs was unrelenting in this philosophy and it resulted in changing the computer, music, movie, and telecommunication industries and more significantly how people live, work, communicate, relax, and in some ways, think.

This is not an approach taught in business schools or self-help marketing courses designed for business neophytes. An entire industry of self-help consultants has exploded on the Internet, all designed to produce mediocrity, all based on rational analysis of what was, rather than what will be. Not many will búy into this alternate approach but that is what makes those who do, so special.

Conventional Wisdom Breeds Mediocrity

Inventing the next big thing in and of itself is not good enough for you to make that dent in the universe. Those who ultimately profit from innovation are not necessarily those who invent it. History is littered with sad stories of entrepreneurs who lacked the ability to implement and communicate their vision to the masses. You have to know how to execute, communicate, convince, and brand your vision in the minds of your audience.

Xerox may have developed the original concept of a graphical user interface and mouse, and they may have had the resources to dominate the future computer market; but they myopically saw themselves as a copier company, and instead chose to turn over the keys to the kingdom to Apple for a relatively small investment stake; much to the chagrin of the Xerox researchers who created the original technology.

The Xerox strategy was textbook business school think – stick to what you do. It’s not so much that the concept is wrong, it’s that the concept must be reinterpreted for a business environment where traditional corporate culture and methodology doesn’t understand, and can’t keep up with the pace of new technologies, and the new forms of competition they breed.

When Xerox realized their miscalculation they tried to capitalize on their original research by creating their own computer, but they failed because they lacked the vision needed to implement something that would spark the public’s imagination. Kodak, Polaroid, and the movie and music industries have all succumbed to the same lack of vision.