First Light
Our plan is to lead the public with new products rather than ask them what kind of products they want. The public does not know what is possible, but we do.
Akio Morita
Your life, one week at a time
Each dot is a single week. The Stoics kept death in view not to despair, but to spend the squares that remain.
Morita is not handing you permission to ignore customers. He is taking away your best excuse.
Read what he actually claims. Not that the public is wrong — that nobody can answer a question about a thing which does not exist yet.
Sony shipped a tape player with the record function removed. Every survey would have killed it.
Now look at which half of your week is asking. The validation call, the poll in the group chat, the four weeks of interviews before you open the file. All of it wears the clothes of diligence.
Some of it is diligence. Most of it is insurance.
A product built from answers comes with a defence attached: when it fails, you point at the transcript. A product built from your own read of what is possible has no defence at all, which is why it is the only one that teaches you anything.
Count the months. If your waitlist is older than your prototype, you are not researching — you are postponing under a name that sounds responsible.
So spend the first hour of this Tuesday his way. Ask nobody, ship the smallest working version of the thing you already believe, and let the market answer the question you were going to put in a form.
You cannot borrow conviction. You can only spend it.