How do you launch a blockbuster product? Stop asking customers what they want. Start asking what they want your products to do for them.

That’s how medical-device maker Cordis created the artery stent—which doubled the company’s revenue in two years and vaulted its stock price fivefold. Cordis’s secret? A new way of listening to customers. And a radical shift from customer-driven to customer-informed innovation.

When you ask customers what they want, they describe solutions—products, features, services. But customers know only what they’ve experienced. They can’t imagine what they don’t know about new technologies, materials, etc. So they suggest things other firms already offer—prompting “me-too” products or incremental improvements—opening the field for competitors.

Kawasaki asked customers to suggest improvements to its Jet Ski stand-up recreational water-craft. They requested side padding for more comfortable standing—never dreaming of a seated craft. Competitors developed seated models, trumping Kawasaki.

The new Sea-Doo Speed Tie is the next boating innovation from BRP to make your time on the water and off, easy, simple, and secure. The Sea-Doo Speed Tie is. In mid-December, McLaughlan was arrested and sentenced to four weeks in jail for violating coronavirus restrictions. The reckless romantics traveled by jet ski from the Isle of Whithorn, in. Aug 06, 2013 Wind-powered jet ski — Also in the running for the greenest ski machine around is the wind-powered Nereus concept by Mathias Koehler. Pivoting fins at the base allow you to steer it underwater too.

Kawasaki Jet Ski

Imagining the unimaginable is for R&D departments, not customers. To fire up your firm’s imagination, ask customers for desired outcomes, not solutions. Their answers will transform your innovation from serendipity into rigorous discipline.

The Idea in Practice

Jet Ski Innovations

Capture customers’ desired outcomes using these steps: