evidence: How to Use Customer Research to Innovate "If I would have asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." Henry Ford’s famous quote is one of our greatest lessons in innovation. (Although there is much doubt he ever said this, let’s not let that spoil our fun.) [...] So, if you ask a customer or potential customer to solve your problem for you, the brain’s most likely course of action is to take the easy way out and naturally gravitate to something it already understands. Hence, the faster horse.