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Henry Ford, Steve Jobs and the fastest horse

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June 16 for an innovation Almanac there is only one date: the birth of Ford. It is 1903, Henry Ford is about to turn 40; he had raised 28,000 dollars from ten investors, they seem a little but according to an inflation calculator, they correspond to 856,000 dollars today, almost a million in short. Soon the Ford Motor Company would start building automobiles in Detroit, in a former wagon factory on Mack Avenue, and the history of the world would be different.

Henry Ford is considered to be one of the greatest innovators of all time. The first vehicle he had built with a group of friends in the back room of the house where he lived with his wife Clara, in 1896, therefore seven years before the real departure. It was a Quadricycle, a kind of four-wheeled bike with an internal combustion engine inspired by a project he had seen in a magazine a few months earlier. He drove it himself for a while before selling it for $ 200 back then to finance his future ventures (today it would be just over $ 6,000). He later bought it back for sentimental reasons, for $ 65, when the Ford Motor Company was a reality.

At the height of his success he was given a phrase, consistent with his vision, albeit it is not quite certain that he said it. This: “If I had asked my clients what they wanted, they would have told me a faster horse.” Many years later Steve Jobs will say, “You can’t just ask customers what they want and try to do it. By the time you are doing it, they will want something new.” This does not mean ignoring customers and feedback, but knowing how to look further. Only geniuses know how to do it.

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