What TIVO Teaches About Creating Products Customers Never Asked For

Breakthrough innovation often requires both listening to customers and imagining solutions they cannot yet articulate. TIVO illustrates how the two approaches can work together.

Years ago, millions of consumers discovered something that they never knew they needed: TIVO, which ultimately would change the way they watched television and disrupt an entire industry. That discovery shows how a truly unique product can become a must-have for consumers who never envisioned it before. But do inventors conjure up these products, or are they inspired by asking the market what it needs?  Eden Blair, a professor at Bradley University in Illinois, says it's a little of both.