When to Build a Faster Horse?

The moral of the story is to uncover the problems and not jump to solutions. In other words, what is the job to be done? What are the current state, the desired state, and the gap separating the two?

Most people I see using this quote often will talk more about Steve Jobs, and ignoring customers or the market and solely relying on intuition and creative genius. I don't know how to put it, but most people who think like that are missing the point.

When you develop a product or do consulting, you solve a problem. One must never, ever, forget that. One must also recognize when people are spitting solutions thinking they are giving you problems. Asking "what are you trying to accomplish?" "What's the desired state?" What's hurting you? Why is this a problem? Why is it a problem now or was it there before? If I told you I've solved the problem, what would you look for to check I have actually solved your problem? How do we know we've solved the problem?

These are questions we ask over and over again in different forms working with our clients, because not doing so would lead us to solving the wrong problem or adopting the wrong solution to the underlying problem.

You peel away layers of solutions and get right down to the actual problem, and once you do that, you can start solving that problem.

That is the moral of the quote. The job to be done may be to transport something from point A to point B, work the land, court a lady, etc. A faster horse is a "solution" or an "implementation" of the customer, not the the problem.

XY problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem

Listening to your customers doesn’t mean “give them what they think they want”.

Customers typically just mention a solution that’s a bit better than what they have, and won’t even mention the root problem they want to solve (they’ll ask for faster ways to fill in paper forms, for example, without questioning the existence of those forms)

Good designers will ask follow-up questions to unearth the problem to be solved, then think about the best (given the state of technology, available budget, political and social constraints) solution. That may be a faster horse, but need not be.

I think the point Ford was trying to make is that you should listen to your customers, but also think for yourself. If a customer says ‘I want a faster horse’, you need to ask, ‘what is it that they really want / what is it they’re actually saying?’.

In Ford’s case that might be something like: ‘I want it to be faster / easier / cheaper to get from point A to point B’. If the way to deliver that to a customer is better horses or a car, it doesn’t really matter so long as the desired value is provided.

Find an emerging market, work hard to be the leader of it, and hope it actually emerges.

PS: There's no proof Ford said that quote. He also didn't take his own advice if he had said it. He spent almost years making cheaper Model T's instead of better cars, and losing a good chunk of the automotive market share in the process.

Perhaps a way to look at it is, is the faster horse a solution, that is scalable, or is it a bandaid that will fix the immediate problem but no more.

Not every problem needs a scalable solution, and bandaid is perfectly good. But many problems do need that.

So, start with the problem and go from there.

> People say listen to your customers

I've found that the most vocal customers/clients are nearly always a minority and are the ones that don't pay as well.

So if you are going to listen to your customers, make sure you're listening to all of them, not just the ones screeching in your ear!

One heuristic: Can you build a faster horse? Marginally, a bit, maybe, but not really. That's telling you that they want something faster, but it can't actually be a horse.

Almost always*

*For broad definitions of 'horse'

Would you want a faster horse? If yes, then build a faster horse