A consumer can seldom say today what new product or new service would be desirable and useful to him three years from now, or a decade from now. New product and new types of service are generated, not by asking the consumer, but by knowledge, imagination, innovation, risk, trial and error on the part of the producer, backed by enough capital to develop the product or service and to stay in business during the lean months of introduction.
W. Edwards Deming
Page 182, Out of the Crisis
More of Deming on Innovation
Related: Innovation Thinking with Clayton Christensen – Engineering Innovation – Managing Innovation – Gary Hamel on Management Innovation
