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When Coffee and Kale Compete · 10 of 11
When Coffee and Kale Compete
Entrepreneurship MEDIUM

Rules of Thumb

When Coffee and Kale Compete Alan Klement
heuristics decision-rules quick-reference principles

Key Principle

These are collected decision rules distilled from across the book — use as a quick-reference checklist when making product, research, and innovation decisions.

Decision Rules

Customer Understanding

  • Progress, not products: Customers buy transformation, not features. Ask "How are you better since you started using this?" not "Do you like this feature?" (Ch. 3)
  • Contrast reveals value: A product has no intrinsic value — only value relative to alternatives in the same situation. A steak is high-value at a restaurant, low-value at a child's birthday party. Compare same-situation, not same-category. (Ch. 3)
  • Design for progress, not outcomes: Customers judge continuously, not at a finish line. If your product only delivers value at an end-state ("lose 10 pounds"), you lose users during the journey. (Ch. 3)
  • Value beyond the moment of use: Products deliver value even when idle — a car in a garage provides mobility on demand. Do not cut "unused" features that provide ambient security or optionality. (Ch. 3)
  • No purchase is random: Be suspicious of the "impulse purchase" concept. Every purchase has a causal history of push forces; "impulse" is a label for motivation you failed to investigate. (Ch. 5)

Competition

  • Define competition by switching evidence: Two products compete only if you can find a customer who switched from one to the other for the same Job. Correlated sales trends are not evidence. (Ch. 3, 7)
  • Know the budget you displace: If you cannot name what customers will stop buying, either you lack research or no JTBD exists. Revenue transfers from existing spend — it does not materialize from nowhere. (Ch. 7)
  • Beware physical similarity as competitive signal: PCs did not disrupt mainframes. The test is "does it fulfill the same struggle?" not "does it look like my product?" (Ch. 8)
  • "New market" usually means insufficient research: Claims of nonconsumption or a market with no existing alternatives typically mean you have not found the compensatory behaviors customers already use. (Ch. 7, 8)
  • Refresh competitive landscape continuously: The competitive set shifts as customers evolve. Lock it in once and you build defenses against the wrong rival. (Ch. 7)

Product Design

  • Both push and pull are required for demand: Push (dissatisfaction) without pull (attraction to a specific solution) lets customers accept the status quo. Pull without push has no urgency. Never rely on one alone. (Ch. 7)
  • Low price without progress is not a strategy: Tata Nano ($400M investment, 18,531 annual sales by 2015) stripped features so aggressively it destroyed pull. Tesla built pull first at the premium end, then moved downmarket to 325,000 preorders in week one. (Ch. 7)
  • Treat demand-reduction forces as competitors: Whether a customer stays put due to anxiety or buys a rival, the revenue impact is identical. Attack inertia and anxiety with the same urgency as you generate demand. (Ch. 7)
  • Distinguish choice vs. use friction: Anxiety-in-choice blocks adoption ("Will this work for me?"); anxiety-in-use blocks retention ("Will the next use satisfy me?"). They require different interventions. Same for habits-in-choice vs. habits-in-use. (Ch. 7)
  • Study the system, not the product: The most effective innovations change how a product interacts with its surrounding system, not the product itself. Identify fragile interdependencies before they collapse beneath you. (Ch. 11, 13)

Research

  • Hunt for compensatory behaviors: Workarounds are direct signals of unmet Jobs. Arm & Hammer nearly missed an entire product line because baking soda was "for baking." The Segway failed its intended Job but succeeded when matched to actual compensatory use — law enforcement patrols and tourist tours. (Ch. 3)
  • Interview for revealed preferences, not stated ones: Ask what customers actually did, not what they say they want. Validate features through past behavior — have they previously tried to solve this problem? (Ch. 4, 13)
  • Study push and pull first, then friction: Friction analysis is meaningless without first confirming demand exists. Teams that start with "why aren't people switching?" may optimize onboarding for a product nobody wants. (Ch. 16)
  • Apply the litmus test for a real Job: Ask "Does this describe an action?" and "Can I visualize someone doing this?" If yes, you have a task, not a Job. A Job describes a desire for life-situation transformation, not an activity. (Ch. 16)

Innovation Strategy

  • Innovation is displacement: Before you make anything, have a clear picture of what customers will stop doing. If you cannot name what dies, you do not understand the Job. (Ch. 8, 16)
  • Do not stratify Jobs into types: Avoid classifying Jobs as "functional," "social," or "emotional." Every Job is a blend of forces acting simultaneously. Over-classification produces contradictory design priorities. (Ch. 16)
  • To unseat a satisfied customer, change the Job, not the pitch: Do not attack the competing product — change the customer's definition of progress. When they adopt a new vision of "better," they conclude on their own that their current solution is inadequate. (Ch. 11)
  • Map cascade effects across categories: A single disruption propagates through a system with nonlinear magnitude. Kodak was hit by four successive cascades — digital cameras, then smartphones, then digital sharing, then video. Monitor disruptions three links away, not just direct competitors. (Ch. 11)

Anti-Patterns to Avoid

  • Optimizing the vacuum tube: Improving your product within its existing category while a cross-category solution quietly serves the same Job. (Ch. 2)
  • Feature-comparison selling: Attacking a competitor's product with superiority claims triggers habit-loyalty defense. Redefine the Job instead. (Ch. 11)
  • Usage-metric obsession: Undervaluing products whose real worth is ambient (insurance, safety, optionality) because active-use numbers look low. (Ch. 3)
  • Overvaluation bias: Collecting more of existing data types instead of identifying what data is actually missing from your research. (Ch. 13)
  • Assuming portfolio expansion: Customers hold one solution per Job at a time. Adoption of a new solution causes abandonment of the old one — do not assume customers will use yours "alongside" the incumbent. (Ch. 3)

Key Quotes

"If your product doesn't help customers make progress, price doesn't matter." — Alan Klement, Chapter 7

"I ferociously attack inertia forces — like habit — as I would any competing product." — Alan Klement, Chapter 7

"A dissatisfied customer does not complain; he just switches." — W. Edwards Deming, cited in Chapter 2

"Models of competition and markets that don't come from customers are almost guaranteed to be wrong." — Alan Klement, Chapter 7

"Products have no value in and of themselves. They have value only when customers use them to make progress." — Alan Klement, Chapter 3

Related References