Debunking the Golden Gut

A good post today on Brand Savant about the myth of the “golden gut” – the belief that “truly creative products and brands don’t need to do research, because they are shepherded by visionary leaders.” Tom Webster notes that the new iPod line is the result of some very good market research.

Webster’s take in a nutshell:

… as romantic as the “golden gut” notion is, it just doesn’t hold up in practice. In fact, the Interwebs are littered with companies that were visionary, wildly creative and challenged the status quo to make something truly great – and failed. Our love of case study-worthy examples like Apple has a baked-in survivor bias that fails to recognize it isn’t only Apple’s creative design and user experience wizardry that has vaulted them to their current status – it’s marrying those sensibilities with an ability to ask the right questions, and decipher the answers.

Nicely put.