It all comes down to four points: (1) all customers want to make progress within the systems they belong to; (2) customers, producers, innovators, and products are all parts of a system; (3) understanding the system comes from studying the interdependencies between the parts, not from studying the parts; and (4) each system is complex and one of a

Harvard professor Theodore Levitt once pointed out, “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!” Levitt’s example of the drill implying that the goal is really a hole is only partially correct, however. When people go to a store to buy a drill, that is not their real goal. But why would anyone want a quarter-inch

Instead of attaching value to what products are, value should attach to what products do for customers.

Figure 11. A breakdown of the forces that generate demand. The pull for a better life.

Solutions for Jobs deliver value beyond the moment of use.

Innovators must understand what the customer does and doesn’t know. We must abandon the idea that customers have a laundry list of “needs.” Instead, we should see customers as having only one need: to make progress within the systems they belong to. Any

Very often, innovators think they are studying customers’ needs – when in fact they are studying what customers don’t like about the products they use today, or what customers currently expect from a product.

You do not help customers make progress by optimizing parts of the system of progress individually. You improve the system by optimizing how those parts work together.

When customers start using a solution for a JTBD, they stop using something else.