Between two schools of thought may lie the answer. Over the years, Silicon Valley and Entrepreneurs have crazed over the Lean Start UpModel.
Create a quick product, market before you’re ready, be okay with bugs, learn, and from that feedback build something the customers indicate they want.
But then there’s the opposite. Have a plan of product launches. Don’t listen to the customer. They don’t always know the companies vision, right?
I mean think of Apple, they had product plans far in advance like the IPhone, IPad, and IPod. There was no clear indicator that this was what the customer wanted, but they built “then they came.”
In Peter Thiels book, Zero to One, he talks how the Lean Startup Mode listens too much about what the customer thinks they want and not enough on fulfilling and solving the problem the company is out to solve.
My best guess is that the answer lies in the middle. Be willing to test with inferior products, but if the company is to solve a big problem, all products should solve that problem damn well.
As Steve Jobs famously said to the CEO of Nike. “You make a lot of great products. But you also make a bunch of crap. Just get rid of the crap and focus on the good stuff.”
Brock’s Blog 