I believe the most successful companies don't discover markets, they create them. Visionaries like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk forge the macro (10x) jump and then ask customers for the micro improvements.
I'm writing an essay about this topic, feel free to take a look the draft if your are interested :)
It looks more symbiotic in my experience. Apple now has the power to “create markets” because they have a reputation, a brand, and lots of money. Steve Jobs was once a nobody working on a startup, and nobodies working on startups are at the whim of the market. He rode the wave of dramatically increasing enthusiasm for consumer computing, which had been a hobby industry for years at that point and had began to take off. The market already wanted it, he didn’t create it.
Likewise, Elon Musk has been a big personality for years. Now he can start a company drilling holes and attract big partnerships and investments. When he started, he was just a nobody making maps software, then still nearly a nobody making internet money transmission software. Both relied on the massive wave of internet popularity in the 90s, with PayPal riding eBays wave. In hindsight, victory seems obvious, it looks like they created their markets. In their time, they rode a market wave. Markets are people, and you can’t make people want something they don’t want.
