STEVE JOBS ON OUTSIDE-IN PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

I came across this great quote from Steve Jobs while reading “The Lean Product Playbook” by Dan Olsen to describe “outside-in” product development and to describe not necessarily relying on customers to provide you groundbreaking ideas, but to know the problems your customers have well before a vision or product direction can be established:

You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can’t start with the technology and try to figure out where you’re going to try to sell it….As we have tried to come up with a strategy and a vision for Apple, it started with:What incredible benefits can we give to the customer? Not starting with: Let’s sit down with the engineers and figure out what awesome technology we have and then how we’re going to market that. And I think that’s the right path to take.