I disagree. Building something people want is often a bigger market than need but that does not mean that you should forget about building products people need.

I disagree. Building something people want is often a bigger market than need but that does not mean that you should forget about building products people need. Firstly, this analysis only applies to consumers. You need to build something a business needs instead of want in order to succeed in the business enterprise. Enterprise is a BIG market. Building medical equipment like MRI scanners are not sexy like the iPod but that is something people need and people will pay lots of money for. Secondly, you can build a product of need and then transition to wanted product. iPod started with need: to store a thousand songs in one device. This was not possible with other competing products. Soon, it became a symbol of need. People started lining up on the Apple store for new product launches. The iPhone heat is slowing down since Apple did not deliver what consumers wanted: a bigger screen. Dropbox is another product of solving a need. We had to use our USB or email transfer our documents. As a result, we had many versions of the same document - not knowing which version is the most updated version. Mind you, Dropbox is a billion dollar business.