Hidden in Plain Sight: How to Create Extraordinary Products for Tomorrow's Customers

Often, when people cross a threshold

It’s a process of deconstruction and reconstruction, and it can lead to some wild, fun, and most likely impractical ideas. But it can also lead to some that seem like common sense—the kinds of ideas that might be way off your radar and yet make you say, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

• http://www.servicedesigntools.org offers a nice collection of frameworks and other tools used in design research, along with some simple case studies.

The sunk costs of existing infrastructure can greatly narrow the cone of possibility, but it may also narrow the cone of opportunity, especially when customers are ready to change shells before a business is.

When a product possesses qualities consistent with our expectations of what that product should contain, we consider it authentic, even if that authenticity is subjective and culturally dependent.

Innovators are followed by early adopters, who are often younger, well educated, active in the community, and avid media consumers.

Monetary wealth will always have value, but more and more we’re valuing time as a precious commodity, and the ability to delegate tasks and conserve time is gaining significance as a sign of status.

Obviously consumers in high- and low-trust ecosystems operate under very different default assumptions, respectively: either that things are trustworthy until red flags are raised, or that things are untrustworthy until fears are allayed.

At the forefront are the innovators, who are typically well respected in their communities and have connections outside of their communities that give them exposure to new ideas.