A great story from the Wall Street Journal yesterday illustrates the value of meeting customers' needs -- or, in Clayton Christensen parlance, getting the job done that the customer wants done, not the job that we think they should want to do.

Paraphrasing from this WSJ story (sub reqd): Volk Enterprises Inc., with annual revenue of about $100 million, is the only U.S. maker of pop-up turkey timers, the little breast-mounted gadgets that sell for a dime apiece to turkey processors. They are designed so that a red plastic temperature indicator, shaped like a tiny umbrella, pops out at 180 degrees, when a bird is fully cooked. Volk pop-ups will be embedded in some 30 million of the 46 million turkeys headed into ovens this Thanksgiving.

Yet, the article points out, during holiday food shows and in cooking columns, the pop-up seldom comes in for praise. Chefs and food experts from Martha Stewart to Cook's Illustrated magazine recommend using regular meat thermometers, which they say are more accurate.

Though the meat thermometers are more accurate, the pop-up turkey timer does the job the customer needs to have done -- automatically signal when the turkey is done. Customers apparently aren't looking for the reliability or consistency of a meat thermometer -- they are looking for convenience.

So even though they get no respect in the food world -- "The company has sponsored university cooking studies and armed its timers with more powerful springs to ensure they can burst through the thickest basting. Anthony Volk says he continues to invite high-profile chefs to visit his factory. None have." -- the Volk Enterprises bank accounts must be as fat as a Butterball turkey about now.

Happy Thanksgiving!