The school at which you studied - design school, disruptive school, TRIZ school, user-centered innovation school, etc - determines the specific words you use.

You can always figure out how to deliver things in somewhat controlled situations, but when you start to get into the reality of the market you start to figure out what isn't going to work.

There's a general belief that failure is the friend of the innovator, but I've come to view it a different way.

The most important thing here is to largely ignore what customers say, and instead watch what they do or track where they spend money.

The CEO should ask what he or she can do to raise the organization's curiosity quotient. One way to do this is to seek to learn more about current or prospective customers, not to figure out which segmentation model to slot them into, but to really understand them as human beings. Another is to live at the intersections where innovation magic occurs.

You still want to be thoughtful about what you do, no doubt, but you have to learn through trial-and-error experimentation as well.

If you invest the time to understand the customer better than they know themselves, if you know the things they want or need even if they can't articulate it, you can begin to develop a good sense as to where there really are unmet needs in the market.