Don't Ask Customers What They Want, Ask This Instead with Dean Curtis, ex-Apple, Palm
Dean Curtis was literally in the room when the iPhone was about to change enterprise mobile computing forever. He was at Palm during the smartphone wars, then moved to Apple right as they were trying to crack the enterprise market. In his Apple interview, he asked the VP of iPhone whether the lack of a physical keyboard would kill their chances in enterprise. The answer? "I think we're going to be okay."
Today, there's not a single physical keyboard on a phone anymore.
Join hosts Nick Paladino and Chuck Moxley as we explore one of our favorite themes: customers don't actually know what they want. Dean Curtis trains his team on this: don't let customers design features, get them to tell you the problem they're trying to solve. He's got this great line about how Apple looked at the keyboard problem differently. Everyone else asked, "How do we make a better keyboard?" Apple asked, "Why is this thing taking up half the device when you're not using it 95% of the time?"
Then there's the California Highway Patrol story. Palm did a pilot with officers using mobile devices for license lookups in the early 2000s. Every single device came back broken after three days. Turns out the officers ran over them with their cars because nobody ever asked if they actually wanted the technology. That's the enterprise adoption problem in a nutshell.
Dean breaks down the three pillars most companies miss: having the right stakeholders including IT, marketing for brand consistency, and someone responsible for training and readiness. Skip any of those and you're setting yourself up for failure. And his take on AI is refreshing. He says the widely held belief that new technology ruins everything is simply wrong. It just makes space for new possibilities. His line: AI rewards the curious.
Key Actionable Takeaways:
- Involve all stakeholders before software deployment, not after - Include IT for technical integration, marketing for brand consistency, and someone responsible for training and readiness; rolling out software Monday morning without user input guarantees resistance and low adoption
- Define problems, not solutions, then let experts solve them - Customers will request features based on what they know, but the real innovation comes from understanding the underlying problem they're trying to solve and approaching it differently, like Apple did with keyboards taking up 50% of the device when unused 95% of the time
- Build trust and confidence through presentation consistency - Whether it's pen-and-paper napkin math or polished iPad proposals, both can work if the customer trusts you; the technology should enhance confidence in the numbers you present, not replace the human element that builds belief in your ability to solve their problem
Want more tips and strategies about creating frictionless digital experiences? Subscribe to our newsletter!
https://www.thefrictionlessexperience.com/frictionless/
Download the Five Step Site Speed Target Playbook: http://bluetriangle.com/playbook
Dean Curtis' Instagram: https://instagram.com/deancurtis23
Ingage: https://ingage.io
Nick Paladino's LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/npaladino
Chuck Moxley's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuckmoxley/