Morita is not saying customers do not matter. He is saying they cannot do his job for him.

Ask a thousand people in 1978 whether they want a cassette player with no speakers and no record button. The answer is no. Sony built it anyway and called it the Walkman.

The trap is not that research lies; it is that research feels like work while quietly moving the decision off your desk.

Validation is the word that gives it away. You already know what you want to build, and the survey exists so that when it fails, the numbers are the ones who were wrong. Three options in a deck, put to a room that has never touched the problem, is not input — it is a search for a co-signer.

The version that quietly ruins companies is softer than a survey. It is the roadmap built only from things a few customers already asked for, which means the roadmap holds nothing they could not already picture, which means you are shipping last year on a slower schedule.

Customers are precise about what hurts today. They are useless about what does not exist yet, because nobody wants a thing they cannot picture.

Their problem, your judgment.

Ask about the first constantly, from anyone who will sit with you. The second is yours, and there is nobody in the building to hand it to.

So today: take the decision you have been gathering input on for a fortnight and make it before lunch. Write the reasoning in four lines and send it to the people it affects. The sign-off you are waiting for is your own.