[takatin]

Coming up with products is a bit like coming up with songs or paintings. Market research won't get you Van Gogh's Starry Night or any of the Beatles' songs. Instead it gives you autotune as music and photo filters as art. If you need to come with a genuinely once-in-a-lifetime product, music, painting or anything creative, it has to come from satisficing a basic need in a unique way (often with a personal touch i.e., "soul"). Current startup landscape dominated by validation is basically the autotune model built for quick iterations and easy profits as opposed to the old-school "soul" model which is more of a personal endeavour that transforms into a mass-movement of sorts. Bitcoin would be a modern example of something coming out of the "soul" model.

edit: One place where Market Research does have value in the "soul" model is for refining the product to fit the market better. The germ of the idea is still intensely personal to the founder.

[duncanawoods]

"satisficing a basic need"

Do you mean this? I can see you might or might not. To satisfice would mean stopping at the first minimally acceptable solution to save time and effort. To invoke art and once-in-a-life-time product seems to suggest you want the opposite concept - optimising i.e. to strive relentlessly towards the maximal solution despite the extra time and effort it takes.

[philwelch]

> Market research won't get you...any of the Beatles' songs.

That's exactly how we got most of the Beatles' songs. The Beatles' function in the music industry was to repeat and popularize the ideas of other artists and to follow nascent trends, the same as any pop artist.

[maroonblazer]

>One place where Market Research does have value in the "soul" model is for refining the product to fit the market better.

That's all anyone asks of Market Research.