life philosophy

"Disparagement."
- Henry Ford particularly to his son Edsel

on market research

"If I asked the public what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."
- Henry Ford

"History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present, and the only history that's worth a tinker's dam is the history that we make today."
- Henry Ford

Model T

"Why is it that I get the whole person, when what I wanted was a pair of hands?"
- Henry Ford

"History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history that we make today."

- Henry Ford

40

Birthday, 1938

"What a man does before forty does not matter." ... "Almost all enduring success comes to people after they are forty. For seldom does mature judgement arrive before then."
- Henry Ford, who founded the Ford Motor Company six weeks before he turned 40.

customer relationship management

Ford and Model T, 1921

If Henry Ford had listened to his customers he would have built a better horse and buggy.

creation of the middle class

"We want to make men not just automobiles."

- Henry Ford on using company profits to double employee pay, which created a stable workforce and turned now flush employees into Ford consumers.

An earlier reference to Ford here.

I want a faster horse

Henry Ford [1863-1947] when he was thirty-three seated in his first car, the Quadricycle, 1896.

Creativity in art and technology is about individual expression. Just as an artist couldn't produce a painting by conducting focus groups, [Steve] Jobs doesn't use them either. Jobs can't innovate by asking a focus group what they want - they don't know what they want. Like Henry Ford once said: "If I'd ask my customers what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse." [p.65]

Apple's former Chief Evalgelist Guy Kawasaki was only slightly exaggerating when he said that the budget for focus groups and market research "is a negative number." "Steve Jobs doesn't do market research. Market research for Steve Jobs is the right hemisphere talks to the left hemisphere." [p.66]

- Leander Kahney [born 1965], Inside Steve's Brain, 2008