In the context of product development, marketing, and innovation, the value of empathy is exaggerated.
Empathy is a surprisingly powerful lever when collecting data during a well defined qualitative research effort. Empathy is a tool to help you be a better interviewer.
But the returns of empathy diminish once the interview ends. Continued use of empathy leads people to poison findings with their own experiences, biases, and imagination.
"Despite such a likably humane doctrine as what might be called the universality of the human heart in all times and places,... it remains beyond doubt that human beings alive on the same day in the same city block, not to speak of different countries and centuries, ...
... will witness, reflect on, and respond to equal stimuli in ways as divergent as an infant’s and a leopard’s." -- Reynolds Price on the dangers of translating ancient texts.
As with any tool, it's vital to understand when not to use empathy.
