For What Its Worth
Computing stories, Customer requests
My good friend worked for a very successful gaming company. Compared to other software companies they get more customer requests than you can imagine. The problem is they are all tactical. It would be better if there were 4 arrows not 3 or the maze had 2 more turns and on and on. He went thru thousands of these requests. His comment was that not one of them helped them to know what the next key to the market was. His customer base was very short sighted, hey it was a game not engineering.Companies can have a hard time finding the golden nuggets of the future among the myriad customer requests for short term fixes. Companies can become immune to customer requests. Many valuable customer requests can go un-noticed and key competitive advantages lost.
