Steve Jobs | “people don’t know what they want”

I agree, I think he had a mastery of vision for handheld content consumption devices. He seemed to intuitively know what was the ‘right’ path based on the unique set of inspirations he absorbed through his life and the way he interpreted how technologies could be used to provide the most value. As Prof. Lavine points out, once the ‘revolutionary’ design is released, then customers are invaluable for honing and perfecting the design through mass use-case scenario feedback (i.e. the suggestion box). Wouldn’t you agree though that the go-to-market products from Apple are nigh-on perfect? In that respect, Apple is not unique anymore though. I think the HTC One phone, for example,  is incredibly elegant and technically spec’d to the eyeballs with top-notch build quality. We can all name other devices that are superbly spec’d and built, which speaks to the flattening of product innovation advantage and the dawn of differentiated ‘content experiences’.