“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” - attributed to Henry Ford

This quote is widely attributed to Henry Ford (1863–1947), founder of the Ford Motor Company and pioneer of mass production. However, no written record from Ford himself has been found. Quote Investigator traces the earliest known version to a 2002 article by John McNeece in the Cruise Industry News Quarterly. Despite its disputed origin, the quote became a cornerstone in product development and innovation thinking. It illustrates a fundamental insight: customers can articulate problems within their current frame of reference, but rarely envision transformative solutions. In complexity terms, the quote highlights the limits of agreement on the What axis — what people say they want may not reflect what they actually need, especially when the problem space is genuinely uncertain or novel.

Quote Investigator — Faster Horse | Harvard Business Review — Henry Ford, Innovation, and That “Faster Horse” Quote