But change the perspective to see the world through your customers' eyes and focus on the job they're trying to get done. Suddenly, you're not just about the technology anymore.
You're opening doors to solve problems beyond just making a hole.
• Why are they drilling that hole in the first place?
• What's the real job they're trying to accomplish?
That's where the real innovation happens. That's how you transform your team into genuine problem solvers.
It's a game-changer.
It's time to stop thinking like a drill-maker and start thinking like a customer-centric innovator.
This comprehensive guide explains the core concepts of JTBD, demonstrates how to apply it to your business, and showcases real-world examples of its success.
Applying JTBD starts with understanding Jobs-to-be-Done Theory.
JTBD Theory is based on the notion that people buy products and services to get “jobs” done.
It provides the foundation for categorizing, defining, capturing, and organizing all your customer’s needs — and aligning your value creation around those needs.
As a result of this framework, a complete set of need statements can be developed in days rather than months, and the statements themselves can last for years instead of quickly becoming obsolete.
Those products that can help people get their jobs done better and/or more cheaply will win in the market. And while products come and go, the underlying job does not go away.
Consider the job of listening to music on the go.
Over the past few decades, we’ve seen products evolve from records to cassette tapes, CDs, MP3 players, and streaming services. But while technology is continually changing, the job of listening to music has stayed constant.
JTBD Theory, therefore, instructs that companies should stop focusing on the product, the technology, or the customer. Instead, focus on the underlying process or job the customer is trying to get done. This allows you to understand customer needs in an entirely new way, making innovation more predictable.
Kettle makers offer a prime example of how JTBD works in practice.
As a kettle maker, it would be easy to conclude that people buy your product to boil water. But boiling water is just a step in the real job the customer is trying to get done — which is to prepare a hot beverage for consumption.
If the business keeps making kettles without focusing on the entire job, they are at risk of disruption by a competitor with a solution that gets the entire job done on a single platform (like Keurig).
It is not uncommon for a new competitor to overtake a market by finding the resources, funding, and technology, and developing the know-how and capabilities to create an offering that gets the entire job done.
For examples of Jobs-to-be-Done in financial services, medical devices, and software, read about three cases that further illustrate the concept.
Jobs Theory and Outcome-Driven Innovation have proven to be highly valuable in the development of innovative pharmaceuticals. A focus on the ‘job’ brings clarity to the complex healthcare delivery process and reveals hidden opportunities to positively impact the patients’ pathway to health.
The Jobs-To-Be-Done approach drove within us a heightened focus on our customers. We discovered important and often “unspoken” customer needs. Even in established markets, we gained new insights enabling stronger value propositions, more impactful customer communications, and innovation better aligned with market needs.
Jobs-to-be-Done Theory and Outcome-Driven Innovation provide absolute clarity for strategic growth initiatives and product innovation. There is no better way to put yourself in your customers’ shoes.
In What Customers Want, Tony Ulwick redefined how innovators think about their customers. His importance and satisfaction framework for a customer’s “jobs to be done” has influenced a generation of marketing and innovation professionals. Now with Jobs to be Done: Theory to Practice, we get the refined version, based on a decade of Tony’s learnings applying the framework.
Understanding your customer needs through JTBD offers a variety of benefits to the business. Most notably, JTBD allows you to:
JTBD also provides valuable insights for specific business functions and roles.
Executives can use JTBD to confidently grow the business with answers to questions like:
Learn More: JTBD for Executives
Jobs-to-be-Done helps product teams to launch hugely successful products by answering questions like:
Dive Deeper: JTBD for Product Managers
It’s not enough just to come up with a brilliant product idea — developers must also successfully execute that idea. JTBD provides developers with important insights like:
Learn More: JTBD for Developers
JTBD helps marketing teams to position and communicate products and services most effectively with answers to questions such as:
Winning at innovation means targeting the right market, understanding the customer’s needs, discovering segments of customers with different unmet needs, and addressing the targeted needs with solutions that get the job done significantly better.
Strategyn has created four Jobs-to-be-Done Frameworks that will guide you through each step of the process. They will help you start on the right foot and avoid the pitfalls that often derail innovation efforts.
The JTBD Market Definition Canvas:
Market definition is often random and left to chance. Define it as a group of people trying to get a job done.
The JTBD Job Mapping Canvas:
First published in HBR, the canvas begins the needs discovery process with a deep understanding of what the customer is trying to accomplish at each job step.
The JTBD Customer Needs Framework:
Gain clarity on the three types of customers: The Job executor, the Purchase decision maker, and the product life cycle support team.
The JTBD Growth Strategy Matrix:
Know when to employ differentiated, dominant, disruptive, discrete, and sustaining strategies to win in the marketplace.
These Jobs-to-be-Done Frameworks help innovators adopt a new mindset and put Jobs Theory into practice.
Companies use various, seemingly random classification schemes to define the markets they serve. We’ve seen teams choose to define markets around products, demographics, personas, use cases, geographies, and more.
The point is, that when the market definition process is obscure, random, and left to chance, teams can inadvertently choose to define markets in ways that cause them to churn, pivot, and fail.
There is a solution: define a market as a group of people and the job they are trying to get done.
Defining a market around the job-to-be-done provides a stable, long-term focal point around which companies can create value.
The JTBD Market Definition Canvas, below, helps the innovator move from a product mindset to a problem mindset while defining the market being served.
The benefits are far-reaching: a market defined through a JTBD lens is stable over time, actionable, and dramatically simplifies the needs discovery process.
For a more detailed guide and video tutorial, Check out Chapter 2 of the Jobs-to-be-Done Playbook
Define Your Market Canvas
Strategyn first introduced the concept of job mapping in the 2008 Harvard Business Review article, “The Customer-Centered Innovation Map.”
A job map is not a process map or a customer journey map.
It does not describe what the customer is doing.
Rather, it depicts what the customer is trying to get done in the ideal order for efficient execution.
The job map reveals opportunities to help customers get their job done better and provides a structure for needs gathering.
All jobs are made up of the same eight steps:
We’ve found that the average job consists of anywhere from 10 to 20 of these steps. Using the Jobs-to-be-Done framework, your goal is to look for opportunities to help customers and improve their experience at each one.
While you might think you have a good understanding of your customer’s job and can create the job map yourself, the best job maps include customer insights gleaned from interviews. With the right interview techniques, you’ll be able to tease out:
These pain points can be translated into comprehensive customer needs and desired outcomes, which you can then address through your product and service innovations.
A completed job map provides customer insights at the 10,000-foot level — and the structure to understand customer needs at a very granular level.
Download the job map template and begin building your job map today.
Understanding your customers is paramount for your products to be successful. But before diving into their needs, it's crucial to identify who these customers actually are. This process varies significantly between B2C and B2B companies, with the latter often facing more complexity.
Our extensive research has led us to identify three distinct customer roles that are applicable across various industries:
In B2C markets, these roles often overlap. A person buying a smartphone, for instance, is likely to be the user, the one who keeps it charged and updated, and the purchaser.
However, B2B scenarios typically involve a more distributed model. Consider enterprise software: developers use it, IT staff maintain it, and C-level executives approve its purchase.
This classification forms the cornerstone of our innovative approach to understanding customer needs. It's particularly valuable because each group brings unique perspectives and requirements to the table.
By recognizing these distinct roles, companies can develop more comprehensive strategies that address the full spectrum of stakeholder needs. This approach ensures that products not only perform well for end-users but also satisfy the concerns of those involved in their acquisition and upkeep.
The core principle of innovation is to help customers complete their jobs better or more affordably.
The JTBD Growth Strategy Matrix outlines five key strategies based on this idea. It explains each strategy when to use it, and what you need for success.
The Jobs-to-be-Done Growth Strategy Matrix helps you choose the right strategy (disruptive, sustaining, differentiated, dominant, or discrete) for your specific market segment and when to use it.
By understanding these strategies, you can choose the best approach for your market and customer needs, increasing your chances of successful innovation.
Clayton Christensen may have popularized Jobs-to-be-Done in his 2003 book The Innovator’s Solution — but it was Tony Ulwick who introduced him to the concept.
Tony Ulwick conceptualized JTBD in 1990 by applying Six Sigma thinking to the innovation process.
His first major success using this methodology came in 1992 when he helped Cordis Corporation reinvent its line of angioplasty balloon products. Cordis’ market share increased from 1% to more than 20%, and the company’s stock price more than quadrupled.
In 1999, Ulwick officially named his innovation process Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI), and he had the pleasure of introducing ODI to Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen.
Christensen also saw the value of making the “underlying process the customer was trying to execute.” He introduced what he called Jobs-to-be-done Theory in his 2003 book, citing Strategyn’s work in job and outcome-based thinking, market segmentation, and the ODI process.
There are a variety of resources to help you learn how to put Jobs-to-be-Done Theory into practice for your business.
Strategyn offers a guided approach to your learning.
Our ODIpro platform gives you the training and tools to apply Jobs-to-done and the world's most advanced innovation process in your organization.
ODIpro Includes:
Tony Ulwick’s Jobs to be Done: Theory to Practice book is the most popular book on JTBD. You can download a copy of the e-book and/or audiobook for free. The book walks you through a thorough explanation of Jobs Theory and how it can be applied to business and product innovation through the ODI process.
Not quite ready to dive into a full book? The Official Jobs-to-be-Done Playbook may be a more approachable jumping-off point. Get more details on:
How do I practically apply the Jobs-to-be-Done framework in my organization?
To practically apply the Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) framework in your organization, you should follow a structured approach, such as the Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI) process. This involves several key steps: First, define your customer and their primary Job-to-be-done.
Working directly with customers to understand their goals is crucial, rather than focusing on your product. This step helps to uncover all related jobs and desired outcomes. Once you have a clear understanding of the job, you can identify and categorize customer needs, including functional, emotional, and social jobs. The next step is to segment the market based on these needs to find opportunities for innovation.
After this, formulate a value proposition that directly addresses the identified unmet needs. Conduct a competitive analysis to understand how well current solutions meet these needs. Use this information to craft a strategy that leverages your strengths and addresses market gaps. This structured approach not only aligns innovation with customer needs but also ensures that every team within the organization is on the same page, leading to more effective and predictable innovation outcomes.
What are some real-world success stories or case studies of companies successfully using the Jobs-to-be-Done framework?
Real-world success stories highlight the effectiveness of the JTBD framework. For instance, companies like Microsoft, Arm & Hammer, and Bosch have successfully implemented the ODI process. Microsoft used it to identify and address specific customer needs, leading to the development of more targeted and successful products.
Similarly, Bosch applied the JTBD framework to innovate in the automotive sector, leading to significant advancements and market success. These case studies demonstrate that by focusing on the specific jobs customers are trying to get done and aligning product development efforts with these jobs, companies can achieve higher success rates and deliver products that better meet customer expectations.
How does the Jobs-to-be-Done framework compare to other innovation and customer-centric frameworks?
When comparing the JTBD framework to other innovation methods like Design Thinking or Lean Startup, it is essential to understand the unique strengths of each approach. The JTBD framework is particularly powerful in its focus on understanding and categorizing customer needs based on the jobs they are trying to accomplish. This differs from Design Thinking, which emphasizes empathy and iterative prototyping, and Lean Startup, which focuses on rapid testing and learning.
While all these methods aim to foster innovation, JTBD provides a structured way to identify and prioritize unmet needs, which can be integrated into other approaches to enhance their effectiveness. For instance, insights from JTBD can inform the empathy phase in Design Thinking or guide hypothesis generation in Lean Startup. By combining these approaches, companies can create a robust innovation process that leverages the strengths of each framework. To learn more about all innovation frameworks, we build this comprehensive guide.
Tony Ulwick
Tony is the pioneer of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory, inventor of the Outcome-Driven Innovation® (ODI) process, and founder and CEO of Strategyn. Philip Kotler calls Tony “the Deming of innovation,” and Clayton Christensen credits him with “bringing predictability to innovation.” Published in Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review, Tony is also the author of 2 best sellers: What Customers Want and JOBS TO BE DONE: Theory to Practice.
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