If you know your stuff, trust your guts!

“Take the well-known example of the Toyota Prius. This hybrid car was not the result of user-centered innovation”…

Toyota started to design the Prius in 1994, when user-centered analysis and market data were pulling auto manufacturers in a different direction: toward heavy, gas-guzzling SUVs. The Prius was a proposal — a vision that came from a better understanding of the future evolution of the socio-cultural and economic scenario. Now, more than a decade after it was first launched, people like it, even if they did not ask for it when it was conceived. And thanks to its early start, Toyota is well ahead of its competitors.

Lesson: if you know your stuff, trust your guts.

[via Sci-Fi Hi-Fi: Weblog]