Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice

The innovator’s ask explicitly addresses the kinds of customers companies want—and need—to create.

Innovations get skewed to do the jobs that executives want them to do—which is to confirm that the customers want to buy the products that the managers want to sell them.

One of the fundamental mistakes that many marketers make is to collect a handful of data points from a huge sample of respondents when what they really need—and this interview illustrates—is a huge number of data points from a smaller sample size. Great innovation insights have more to do with depth than breadth.

Organizations that lack clarity on what the real jobs their customers hire them to do can fall into the trap of providing one-size-fits-all solutions that ultimately satisfy no one. Deeply understanding jobs opens up new avenues for growth and innovation by bringing into focus distinct “jobs-based” segments—including groups of “nonconsumers” for wh