“Involving users/consumers at every stage of the process is crucial to achieving successful innovation”

To what extent is this true? Discuss, using cases and examples from the course to develop your argument.

Things to think about;
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” – attributed to Henry Ford and echoed by Steve Jobs (note embeddedness problem).
Relevance of user input to radical vs. incremental innovations? Standardized vs. tailored offerings?
What does user/customer involvement mean and what does it bring? How can the user experience be addressed in the innovation process?
How about users as innovators or co-creators?

Read widely – use Google Scholar and library to tap into relevant literature.
Use cases and examples from the course – M-16 Rifle, IDEO etc. – to develop your argument.