“In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer,” said Steve Jobs. “Nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation. Design needs to be a fundamental part of the value proposition, not just a beautifying thing.”

Worse, by the time a company creates something based on a trend, everyone else has already done so; it’s last in, so it’s not noteworthy. It’s not so easy to differentiate oneself at that point.

Particularly revolutionary ideas can be too much change for people to handle. Innovations often need to be explained in terms of the status quo. Think about metaphor as a way to use cultural imprinting to provide useful explanations that will aid adoption, which might explain why automobiles are rated in horsepower and electric lights in

One of the reasons why so many people fail when they think that an unusual observation is a key to an insight is that they don’t bother to find out whether or not the observation is linked to a greater cultural extension.

Segmentation is about talking to someone at a single moment in time, and there are so many moments in time. We are situational animals, and we use products differently depending on our mood and the circumstances in which we find ourselves. That’s another reason why segmentation studies don’t work. From this perspective, it is almost impossible to

Just because you love an idea and think it’s great does not mean that your intended market will respond accordingly. Innovators can become so attached to a particular iteration of a concept that they miss information telling them to pivot one way or another to improve on their innovation.

What value does the new product have compared with the old, as determined by the potential consumer? Perceived advantage is built on factors such as greater prestige, more convenience, or better value for the money.

In the fields of observation, chance favors the prepared mind. —LOUIS PASTEUR

Cultural legacies are powerful forces. They have deep roots and long lives. They persist, generation after generation, virtually intact, even as the economic and social and demographic conditions that spawned them have vanished, and they play such a role in directing attitudes and behavior that we cannot make sense of our world without them.