I’ve written in the past about how users don’t know what they want, and I ran across some recent examples that illustrate my point.
First, Seth Godin posted a short little article that gave an example of disruptive technology:
Here’s why people liked the telegraph: It was universal, inexpensive, asynchronous and it left a paper trail.
The telephone offered not one of these four attributes. It was far from universal, and if someone didn’t have a phone, you couldn’t call them. It was expensive, even before someone called you. It was synchronous–if you weren’t home, no call got made. And of course, there was no paper trail
If you had asked someone sending a telegraph how they would want to improve the system you’d hear the same tired response “we want it faster, we want it easier, we want it cheaper.” No one would suggest less features.
However, given the option between the sending a telegraph or making a phone call the answer is clear. The users didn’t know they wanted instant conversation; they didn’t even know it was possible.
The telegraph companies couldn’t have predicted this. The users didn’t even know they wanted it. This is what makes something disruptive.
John Borthwick brings up a similar point about Google and Youtube:
YouTube.com is now the second largest search site online — YouTube generates domestically close to 3BN searches per month — it’s a bigger search destination than Yahoo.
When [Google] bought YouTube the conventional thinking was they are moving into media. In hindsight — it’s media but more importantly to Google — YouTube is search.
If you asked someone why they visit Google they wouldn’t say they go there to watch videos, they would say they visit Google to search. However, Google realized that there were a lot of people searching Youtube and Hey! Our users like searching too!
Google wasn’t buying videos, they were buying a video search engine; something a user wouldn’t have expected but in retrospect seems obvious. In 2006, when Google purchased Youtube, online video was still in it’s infancy. Google’s users didn’t know they wanted to search video. In fact, most news sources assumed google was moving into the media business.
Users can’t predict something disruptive, that’s what makes it disruptive.
