In today’s International Herald Tribune, columnist Tom Friedman (author of Hot, Flat & Crowded, and The World is Flat) makes a key observation about innovation, in the course of discussing whether to bail out Detroit. 

The job, says Friedman, of the car companies is “to make the cars people don’t know they want but will buy like crazy when they see them.” I would have been happy to live with my Sony Walkman, Friedman says, had Apple not invented the iPod. Now I can’t live without it. I didn’t know I wanted it, but Apple did. Same with my Toyota hybrid. 

The job of the innovator is not to create what people want – everyone is doing that —  but to create what people don’t know they want but buy like mad when it is provided. 

How in the world can innovators do this?

I believe the answer lies in vision. We ordinary human beings have very limited imagination. We cannot envision radically new things because we live in the concrete world of the ‘now’, what exists today. Great innovators envision a future that is radically different, then make it happen. Henry Ford had that vision. He envisioned middle class working families driving into the countryside on a Sunday in their Model T to enjoy a picnic. And then he made this happen, by inventing the production line.

Detroit’s management, once visionary, has now evolved from visionary to operators to caretakers. Its leadership long ago lost its vision and excitement over building beautiful, fast, cheap, economical cars. And now, says Friedman, they have become undertakers.  

Look at Britain. Britain once dominated the motorcycle industry, led by venerable brands like Norton-Villiers-Triumph, and BSA. In the space of only four years, 1969-73,  they lost their markets totally to Kawasaki Yamaha and Honda. They failed to innovate. They lost their vision. Even when the British government nationalized the motorcycle plants, and injected tons of money, they failed to revive the industry.  

Peter Drucker’s pioneering work on innovation was usually titled, by him, Innovate and Abandon! Abandon old dull products. Innovate visionary new ones. Give people what they may hate at first, then love soon after.  

Do you have the courage?