Ok, I’ll be honest… The crowd tends to be wrong (a lot), but I would never tell them that. In product development — data, customer needs/wants, and trends — allow the organization to build solutions that make money (which is the point).

But, in bleeding edge innovation, there is a need to anticipate what the customer wants before they know they want it — this is a delicate balance.

Hearing/capturing the chatter is important, as it should inherently drive your products development. But we shouldn’t listen to everything the client wants, unless you want a frenetic product that doesn’t actually do anything (or even worse… does way too much).