Do people know what they want, or should we create products that we want?

There's no right or wrong answer but to me, it's a bit of both. Did anyone know they wanted to get into strangers cars for rides? no. But they definitely did want on-demand ride services. It's really a constant cycle of making assumptions and testing it. Rather than focusing on what people want, I think it's more identifying a problem that people have (the more the better). Find a way to reach people that want that problem solved. Build a solution for that problem. Then focus on what they want :) Just my .02.

I believe the famous quote from Henry Ford is just a limited breakdown of what actually happened. It's more about which questions are raised to help people understand the situation they're in and compile a proposal for optimization from it. The story might not have gone viral if the narrator told it like: Q: "What do you need to overcome?" A: "We need to deliver more and heavier stuff quicker." The way people usually think is solution oriented based on experience. They know that horses do the job and it doesn't sound too far-fetched to make them speed up. A mediator who thinks outside the box comes in handy and proposes solutions outside the familiar field. I have an example here: While building Wunderpresentation I interviewed people about their approaches to creating slides for presentations. One common ground was the lack of efficiency and joy when having to design the slides. While other presentation tools focus on making the design process easier and more enjoyable, the approach of Wunderpresentation is the complete absence of any design activity.

Two sides of the same coin.

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You can ask the challenges they face but not what product

I think this could be a combination of both. People might (or might not) know what they want, but not know about how to use a product that services what they need. So in a way, it can be up to us to create something the general public wants/ needs.

People dont know what they want, but they know that there is a problem that needs a solution.