Entrepreneurship
Jobs to be Done: Theory to Practice
Tony Ulwick 2016 12 references
Use when applying Jobs-to-be-Done Theory or Outcome-Driven Innovation to define customer needs, segment markets, select growth strategies, or prioritize innovation investments.
innovation customer-needs product-strategy market-segmentation outcome-driven-innovation jobs-to-be-done
Overview
The Core Framework
- Innovation fails because companies have no shared definition of "customer need" — not because they lack ideas or creativity
- Customers don't buy products — they hire solutions to get a job done; the metrics they use to measure success are desired outcomes
- The JTBD Needs Framework defines 6 need types: core functional job, desired outcomes, related jobs, emotional/social jobs, consumption chain jobs, financial outcomes
- The Opportunity Algorithm (
Importance + max(Importance - Satisfaction, 0)) quantifies which outcomes are unmet — score ≥10 = underserved - Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI) is a 10-step (84 sub-step) process validated at an 86% success rate vs. the industry average of ~17%
Quick Lookup
| Situation | Do This | Avoid This |
|---|---|---|
| Defining customer needs | Capture 50-150 desired outcome statements per job using the Job Map | Asking customers what solutions they want |
| Choosing a growth strategy | Use the Growth Strategy Matrix based on segment data | Picking strategy without knowing if segments are underserved or overserved |
| Prioritizing opportunities | Score outcomes with the Opportunity Algorithm; target ≥10 | Relying on gut feel or feature requests |
| Segmenting the market | Segment by shared unmet outcomes, not demographics | Using personas based on age, income, or psychographics |
| Launching quickly | Reposition messaging around unmet outcomes first | Building new features before checking if existing ones satisfy unmet needs |
| Entering a "mature" market | Run outcome-based segmentation — hidden segments exist | Assuming no opportunities remain because the market is saturated |
The Key Insight
"A company cannot reliably create customer value if it does not first agree on what a need is and how many different types of needs customers have." — Tony Ulwick, p. 46
References
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