The Jobs To Be Done Handbook

We've written this book for the Jobs-to-be-Done student and practitioner who has a basic grasp of JTBD concepts (Forces Diagram, JTBD Timeline, Interview Process) and wants to strengthen their technique and continue to get better results out of their application of Jobs-to-be-Done.How to Use This BookThe only person who knows what you'll hire this book for is you (but we have our theories). Consider: Cramming it to pull out anything you haven't seen before. Flipping through it a few minutes before you conduct an interview to review the basics. Using it to think through who to interview when starting a project. Handing it to a colleague to quickly bring them up-to-speed on JTBD so they can be your interview partner. Not Quite Ready?There are lots of resources available to help you get caught up on the Jobs-to-be-Done basics. Visit JobstobeDone.org and think about: Listening to the JTBD Radio podcast (especially the sample interviews). Taking the Online JTBD Course and learning on your own time. Attending a Switch Workshop and getting an immersive one-day crash course in Jobs-to-be-Done.

Why do some innovation projects succeed where others fail? The book reveals the business implications of Jobs Theory and explains how to put Jobs Theory into practice using Outcome-Driven Innovation.

In a challenging economy filled with multiple competitors, no one can afford to stagnate. Yet, innovation is notoriously difficult. How do you pinpoint the winning ideas that customers will love? Sifting through purchasing data for clues about what might sell or haphazardly brainstorming ideas are typical strategies. However, innovation expert Stephen Wunker offers the effective Jobs method: determining the drivers of customer behavior--those functional and emotional goals that people want to achieve. This simple shift in perspective opens up new insights about your customers and a wealth of hidden opportunities. For example, social media newcomer Snapchat used the Jobs process to capture the millennial demographic. By reducing functionality, the company satisfied its users' unmet need to document real life in the moment, without filters and "like" buttons. Packed with similar examples from every industry, this complete innovation guide explains both foundational concepts and a detailed action plan developed by Wunker and his team. In Jobs to Be Done, the groundbreaking Jobs Roadmap takes you step-by-step through the innovation process and reveals how to: Gather valuable customer insights Turn those insights into new product ideas Test and iterate until you find original profitable solutions And much more! Jobs to Be Done gives you a clear-cut framework for thinking about your business, outlines a roadmap for discovering new markets, new products and services, and helps you generate creative opportunities to innovate your way to success.

These days, consumers have real power: they can research companies, compare ratings, and find alternatives with a simple tap. Focusing on customer needs isn't a nice–to–have, it's a strategic imperative. The Jobs To Be Done Playbook (JTBD) helps organizations turn market insight into action. This book shows you techniques to make offerings people want, as well as make people want your offering.

The foremost authority on innovation and growth presents a path-breaking book every company needs to transform innovation from a game of chance to one in which they develop products and services customers not only want to buy, but are willing to pay premium prices for. How do companies know how to grow? How can they create products that they are sure customers want to buy? Can innovation be more than a game of hit and miss? Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen has the answer. A generation ago, Christensen revolutionized business with his groundbreaking theory of disruptive innovation. Now, he goes further, offering powerful new insights. After years of research, Christensen has come to one critical conclusion: our long held maxim—that understanding the customer is the crux of innovation—is wrong. Customers don’t buy products or services; they "hire" them to do a job. Understanding customers does not drive innovation success, he argues. Understanding customer jobs does. The "Jobs to Be Done" approach can be seen in some of the world’s most respected companies and fast-growing startups, including Amazon, Intuit, Uber, Airbnb, and Chobani yogurt, to name just a few. But this book is not about celebrating these successes—it’s about predicting new ones. Christensen contends that by understanding what causes customers to "hire" a product or service, any business can improve its innovation track record, creating products that customers not only want to hire, but that they’ll pay premium prices to bring into their lives. Jobs theory offers new hope for growth to companies frustrated by their hit and miss efforts. This book carefully lays down Christensen’s provocative framework, providing a comprehensive explanation of the theory and why it is predictive, how to use it in the real world—and, most importantly, how not to squander the insights it provides.

A Job to be Done is the process a consumer goes through whenever she aims to transform her existing life-situation into a preferred one, but cannot because there are constraints that stop her. When Coffee and Kale Compete by Alan Klement helps you become better at creating and selling products that people will buy. Your joy at work will grow. You will know how to help companies increase profits, reduce waste, and remain competitive. In doing so, you will help economies prosper, and help provide stable jobs for employees and the families that depend on them. Top entrepreneurs, business owners, and Alan himself share their experiences of how they used Job to be Done to help them create successful products. Alan not only relates success stories but also gives examples of products and companies that failed. The experiences of others will help you make the best choices for your own company or the company where you work. You will also learn how to analyze the competition and make customers notice your product. The knowledge in this book will help you boost growth for your product and business.

A "detective story" that delivers key insights for any businessperson asking the questions: who really are our customers, why do we lose them, how do we regain them? Customers can be a mystery. Despite the availability of more data than ever before, everyone, from the CEO to salespeople in the field, struggles to understand who their customers really are, what they want, why they lose them, and how to regain them. To crack the case, start thinking like a market detective. David Scott Duncan shows how in his entertaining story of Tazza, a fictional chain of cafes with declining sales and leaders urgently seeking to understand why. The vivid characters of Tazza’s market detective force come to their aha moment when they finally understand why their most loyal customers walked out the door—and how they can get them back. The core of the Tazza story is a simple, powerful idea that upends how most businesses view their customers. Customers have “jobs to be done.” They “hire” companies to solve a problem or fulfill a need and “fire” them when unhappy. Duncan’s fresh way of thinking about how to understand your customers’ secret lives provides an innovative path for solving whatever market mysteries you face.

A world-renowned innovation guru explains practices that result in breakthrough innovations "Ulwick's outcome-driven programs bring discipline and predictability to the often random process of innovation." -Clayton Christensen For years, companies have accepted the underlying principles that define the customer-driven paradigm--that is, using customer "requirements" to guide growth and innovation. But twenty years into this movement, breakthrough innovations are still rare, and most companies find that 50 to 90 percent of their innovation initiatives flop. The cost of these failures to U.S. companies alone is estimated to be well over $100 billion annually. In a book that challenges everything you have learned about being customer driven, internationally acclaimed innovation leader Anthony Ulwick reveals the secret weapon behind some of the most successful companies of recent years. Known as "outcome-driven" innovation, this revolutionary approach to new product and service creation transforms innovation from a nebulous art into a rigorous science from which randomness and uncertainty are eliminated. Based on more than 200 studies spanning more than seventy companies and twenty-five industries, Ulwick contends that, when it comes to innovation, the traditional methods companies use to communicate with customers are the root cause of chronic waste and missed opportunity. In What Customers Want, Ulwick demonstrates that all popular qualitative research methods yield well-intentioned but unfitting and dreadfully misleading information that serves to derail the innovation process. Rather than accepting customer inputs such as "needs," "benefits," "specifications," and "solutions," Ulwick argues that researchers should silence the literal "voice of the customer" and focus on the "metrics that customers use to measure success when executing the jobs, tasks or activities they are trying to get done." Using these customer desired outcomes as inputs into the innovation process eliminates much of the chaos and variability that typically derails innovation initiatives. With the same profound insight, simplicity, and uncommon sense that propelled The Innovator's Solution to worldwide acclaim, this paradigm-changing book details an eight-step approach that uses outcome-driven thinking to dramatically improve every aspect of the innovation process--from segmenting markets and identifying opportunities to creating, evaluating, and positioning breakthrough concepts. Using case studies from Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, AIG, Pfizer, and other leading companies, What Customers Want shows companies how to: Obtain unique customer inputs that make predictable innovation possible Recognize opportunities for disruption, new market creation, and core market growth--well before competitors do Identify which ideas, technologies, and acquisitions have the greatest potential for creating customer value Systematically define breakthrough products and services concepts Innovation is fundamental to success and business growth. Offering a proven alternative to failed customer-driven thinking, this landmark book arms you with the tools to unleash innovation, lower costs, and reduce failure rates--and create the products and services customers really want.