LeanCoffeeKL 51 - Jobs-to-be-done Theory

This week, I'm happy to say that @chadhok has stepped up and is leading the #LeanCoffeeKL discussion around "Jobs-to-be-done Theory".

Customers — whether individuals or businesses — have problems that need solving and thus search for a product to provide a solution to that problem. This is the essence of Jobs-to-be-done Theory, a conceptual framework developed by Clayton Christensen mostly in his books The Innovator’s Dilemma (http://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Business/dp/0062060244/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b) and The Innovator’s Solution (http://www.amazon.com/dp/1578518520?tag=cdbaby). These two books are also the major source where he developed his theory of disruptive innovation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_innovation).

The core of the concept is that customers hire products to do jobs. Thus, rather than focusing market segmentation on the type of customer you should be focusing on the types of jobs your customers are hiring your product to do. Looking at it from this perspective you may find that your product might not be competing with products similar to it, but with completely different segments such as “boredom”.

Think about all the alternative, non-standard uses you have hired products to do in your past. Have you ever received surprising feedback from customers about how they are using your products? In this week’s discussion we will talk about examples of jobs-to-be-done theory and how to apply it to our own products.

Related Links

What Customers Want from Your Products (http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5170.html) Clayton M. Christensen, Scott Cook, and Taddy Hall Harvard Business School, January 16, 2006

Watch this 4 minute video of Clay describing the theory (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9nbTB33hbg)