the end user (or functional job executor), the product life cycle support team, and the purchase decision maker.

As I will explain, the “ideas-first” approach is inherently flawed and will never be the most effective approach to innovation. It will always be a guessing game that is based on hope and luck, and it will remain unpredictable. The “needs-first” approach to innovation, while not inherently flawed, is often flawed in its execution. Recognizing why

Our experience suggests that companies can win with a dominant strategy if they introduce a product or service that gets the job done (addresses the customer’s unmet desired outcomes) at least 20% better and at least 20% more cheaply. This can be measured with high precision and probability when evaluating a proposed concept against a complete set

While defining the functional job correctly is important, uncovering the customer’s desired outcomes (the metrics they use to measure success when get the job done) is the real key to success at innovation.

Trying to guess at what needs-based segments exist and which needs are unmet introduces risk and variability into the innovation process. This is why statistically valid quantitative research is an essential part of the ODI process.

Why do you conduct competitive analysis? Is it merely to see which features of competitors’ products are technically superior? Or is the goal to gain the insight that is needed to create products and services that get a job done better and/or more cheaply than competing solutions? We argue that the latter should be the goal. Therefore, comparing

In addition, a job map is not a customer journey or customer experience map: it does not describe the journey the customer goes through to buy, receive, set-up, use, upgrade, clean and maintain a product. These activities are consumption chain jobs that are captured and treated separately. If you are focusing on the customer journey, you are not

A job map is focused on the underlying goals of the actions being taken. For example, you wouldn’t say an anesthesiologist is “looking at the display” (a solution that describes what action the anesthesiologist is taking). Instead, you would say the anesthesiologist is “monitoring the patient’s vital signs”, which is the underlying goal of looking

To avoid defining the job to narrowly, work directly with customers to understand not why they bought your product, but how your product fits into what they are trying to accomplish. Ask, “Why are you using that product, what job are you ultimately trying to get done”.