I completely agree about finding visionary customers. You should hear what focus groups of them sound like! Henry Ford said, "If I'd have asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have said 'faster horses.'" The trick is to ask regular customers for their experiences, find themes — particularly frustrations/problems — and work with the visionaries to solve the problems. If that had been done, the iPod could have been invented years earlier by Sony, because it's a music discovery/transfer/purchasing/sharing/storage/search/listening system, not just a player. iTunes is the invention, not the iPod. Thanks for your thoughtful comments. I'll look into Hippel. You might enjoy reading "Concept 'testing' in focus groups" at http//www.mnav.com/contest.htm. It's embarrassingly dated, but it's a good guide as far as it goes. Working on revisions. I'm looking into Drupal and Joomla for the information managent system described above. BTW, your blog is a find and I'll be following it.