Jobs to Be Done

Despite the available needs-gathering methods, companies nearly always fail to uncover all or even most of the customer’s needs. How is this possible? While nearly every manager agrees that the goal of innovation is to devise solutions that address unmet customer needs, a common language for communicating a need does not exist.

Customers have different unmet needs because subsets of customers often encounter added difficulties that the other customers do not face. These added difficulties create additional unmet needs for that user.

An effective innovation process must produce answers to the following questions: Who is the customer? What job is the customer trying to get done? What are the customer’s desired outcomes? How do they measure value? Do segments of customers exist that have different unmet outcomes? What unmet outcomes exist in each segment? What segments and unmet

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”. For example, if a stove-top kettle maker were to ask its users “what job did you

We follow a strict set of rules when constructing desired outcome statements—for example, they are purposely designed and structured to be measurable, controllable, actionable, devoid of solutions, and stable over time. They are also structured so they can be prioritized for importance and satisfaction using statistically valid market research meth

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

To create a winning value proposition, a company must know why a segment of customers is underserved, along which dimensions they are underserved, and to what degree. Once a company knows those three things, it can define a value proposition in a way that communicates its intent and ability to address all the unmet needs.

Build a digital marketing strategy around unmet outcomes When potential customers use Google to find and evaluate product alternatives, they rarely start by entering the product name and model because they have yet to discover it. Rather, they enter keywords or phrases that are associated with the “Job-to-be-Done,” such as a job step or a specific

For a medical device manufacturer, the end user of a surgical tool is the surgeon. The surgeon may be seeking products or services that will “minimize the likelihood of removing healthy tissue” or “quickly determine the points of affixation for attachment.” End users are also able to provide your company with a list of their emotional jobs and thei