Managers Reject Ideas Customers Want

Jennifer Mueller of the University of San Diego, Jeff Loewenstein of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Jennifer Deal of the Center for Creative Leadership studied a company that was considering dozens of new product ideas. The researchers asked middle managers, C-suite executives, idea generators, and other stakeholders to rate each idea on its creativity, feasibility, and profitability. Then they asked customers how desirable each idea was. The customers wanted the most-creative ideas, the team found, but not the ideas that people in the firm thought would be most profitable or feasible. In an interview, Professor Mueller defends her research. Mueller also addresses questions such as whether companies are emphasizing the wrong product qualities when they innovate or whether they are missing opportunities to launch hits as a result.