"Finding what the market wants and providing it" only worked when the market had wants, and wants are finite. Once those are all taken care of, everything past

"Finding what the market wants and providing it" only worked when the market had wants, and wants are finite. Once those are all taken care of, everything past that is engineered desire, which is where consumer culture comes into play. You don't need to explain to someone why they want food. Of course they want food, they're hungry. You do need to explain to them why they want a pizza covered in gold leaf. You don't need to explain why they want a car: they want to get around in the United States, and a car is more or less mandatory: you need to explain why they want a $100,000 SUV that gets worse fuel economy than a comparable van while holding less cargo and has such terrible visibility there's a non-insignificant chance they will run over and kill one of their own children with the thing. You don't need to convince them they want a smart phone, you need to convince them they want a new smart phone that's 11% faster than the old one even though their current one works fine. Tons and tons of business, not even remotely isolated to the tech sector, has nothing at all to do with meeting consumer demand or fulfilling wants in the market; it has to do with building slightly different versions of products that already exist, and then spending millions if not billions of dollars so you can scream at the market's ear as loud as possible until they think that voice is coming from inside their own heads, and they'll buy it to make it shut up. And then repeat.