Any Value we create is through meeting the needs of others.
Even our ability to understand our environment by creating a map requires us to first define the user need as it is the anchor for the entire map — see figure 30.
Alas, a mantra of “not sucking as much as the competitors” whilst rarely explicitly stated is surprisingly common. An alternative mantra is “we must be the best we can” but to do that we must understand what it is we need to be.
Despite this, the usual response I receive when asking a company or a specific project to explain its user needs is a blank stare. I have seen many large projects in excess of a $100M with endless specification documents where the scale of spending and paperwork is only matched by the inability of the group to explain what the user actually needs. page 