Technology innovation and user needs: Who is the chicken, who is the egg?

Believe that this problem has plagued countless product people and market people: in the end is the user needs to promote technological innovation, or technological innovation to lead the user needs? Who is the chicken and who is the egg?

Used to analyze popular products, can sum up the modern enterprise solves the user demand the Main method: 1, follows the wind, mainly refers to the imitation has obtained the market proof the product; 2, grasps, mainly means discovers has already had the urgent need to solve the demand, the quick product; 3, creates, mainly refers to those novel product, It was only after the advent that people discovered that they had a need to use the product.

The first two types of enterprise products, obviously from the user demand, the Internet giants are almost the second category, its purpose is to seize the user's clear demand, provide quality products.

With the success of Apple, more and more people are looking forward to setting up a third kind of technology innovation enterprise-creating the demand of users. This kind of enterprise, often can expand a brand-new industry, create extremely high value, extremely "cool". For example, before Airbnb succeeds, who would have thought that being able to return less money was a night at a stranger's house, and who thought that such seemingly unsafe behavior had so much demand; Snapchat put forward after reading that burning, innovative ideas to let people realize that the picture sharing is not obvious demand: look at the good, never store; Vine launched a 6-second video (which triggered Facebook to do 15-second video), produced a lot of wonderful and interesting small video, while the designer Works Group buy site Fab, then put forward the concept of cheap sales designer works, so that people can get the quality of life and price benefits ...

The relationship between chicken and egg?

As mentioned above, user needs and technological innovation seem to be the relationship between chicken and egg. But is it really?

What I want to say is: not necessarily. In essence, at least the vast majority of technological innovation comes from demand: regardless of how Mr Jobs meets the future, it is still hard to say that demand for the iphone is created out of thin air. Even if we don't know we need a well-designed smartphone, it doesn't mean that we don't really need it. The iphone pioneered a new era of mobile phones and even mobile terminals, essentially based on the designer's deep grasp of people and the need to hide deep within human beings. In other words, even the iphone is still a demand for user-driven technological innovation. Similarly, the previous mentioned Airbnb, Snapchat and other products, do, but hidden in the depths of the user's inner needs to explore and meet.

In contrast, the technological innovations made in response to imaginary needs are hard to generate. For example, "Jelly chess" in the picture below, who would like to try?

You can see that demand and innovation is almost a one-way map: there is demand there is innovation, simple innovation can not drive the production of demand. In other words, simply using the relationship between chicken and egg to make an analogy is actually inappropriate.

There are exceptions to everything.

It is easy to find that all of the above mentioned is "the vast majority", however, there are very few simple technological innovation, can bring a completely non-existent demand. There are many studies in addition to satisfying the scholar's own sense of satisfaction, for decades and even centuries, people do not know where they can be used and what needs to be met.

Kelly in Runaway says that human beings are only evolutionary choices, that is, even if humans do not exist, evolution will not stop. Further, technological advances will continue to arise, whether people need them or not. Basic theories of mathematics and physics, such as black holes, strings ... Many of them have experienced the loss of time and technological progress, creating a demand that people never thought of, while others do not have a suitable application scenario until now.

How to produce such technological innovations? It's hard for me to give the answer. This, like the Strickland in the moon and six pence, abandons his wife and gives up his superior life simply because he feels he is "painting". At the end of the novel, Strickland painted a masterpiece, but made a will to burn it. Perhaps this kind of technological innovation, but people deep heart of a desire it.

Common innovation, driven by shallow or deep user needs. At the same time, there are some no reason to follow the spirit of the direction of innovation, do not know where to come, they or annihilation, or change the world.