Usually when you read an article about Steve Jobs, this Henry Ford quote is not far behind:

“If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.”

It’s great. A few simple words sum up the perception we would like to believe about such an enigmatic man. But what an at-first-glance, shortsighted, and under-accurate approximation of the truth.

The quote initially summons the stereotype of an egomaniacal perfectionist who believes he knows better than the users themselves what they want. The old adage “The customer is always right” flies right out the nearest window. In fact, Ford isn’t even asking the customers- rather, he’s assuming he already knows the answer. Keep Reading

Most of you reading this in the USA probably own a car conceived, or produced outside of the USA. You don’t have to feel bad about that- the rest of the world caught the USA slipping on the very ideas they invented years ago. The ideas of the assembly line, and the industrial revolution were around long before Henry Ford, but like many of the most intriguing figures in history, he took the new ideas from his own time and repackaged them simply for public consumption.

As we watch the US automotive industry get reinvented, let’s take a moment to see what us app developers can learn from the past with a few Henry Ford quotes. Keep Reading