The Jobs-to-be-Done theory is one of the most important concepts in business today. It's a simple idea - people hire products to get jobs done. Few companies keep this in mind when they are looking for new ideas, but it's something that can be applied with great success. It helps companies create new products and services that are better tailored to customer needs. In this blog post, we talk about how you can use the JTBD perspective to generate more innovative ideas for your company.
Jump to:
- 1. What is the Jobs-to-be-Done theory?
- 2. How to use the JTBD perspective to generate more innovative ideas for your company
- 3. Why this method generates better ideas than traditional research methods
- 4. Examples of companies that have used this strategy successfully in their marketing campaigns
- Wrap Up:
1. What is the Jobs-to-be-Done theory?
The first step is to understand what the jobs-to-be-done theory means. It's a simple idea that people hire products to get jobs done. For example, if you want to protect your car from dings and scratches while it’s parked on the street at night, you might buy an alarm system for your car. The alarm system is the product, and the “job” that you want done is to protect your car from dings and scratches while it's parked on the street at night.
This might seem obvious, but few companies keep this in mind when they're looking for new ideas or creating products. Instead, they rely on inquiry methods that don’t generate the most promising ideas or exhaustive sets of possibilities.
To systematically uncover more and better innovative ideas, Ulwick recommends first using the jobs-to-be-done framework to break down the job that customers want dome into discrete steps. This process can be used for any product, service, feature set, or entirely new business.
2. How to use the JTBD perspective to generate more innovative ideas for your company
When companies are stuck in a rut, it's often because they have stopped being customer-centric. This perspective involves looking at the world through your customers’ eyes to ensure that you're creating products and services that truly solve their problems.
Understand what the job means - ask yourself why someone would want this product or service. For example, most alarm systems are designed to protect cars from dings and scratches while they're parked on the street at night. This is their primary job - it's why people go out of their way to purchase them in the first place.
However, this might not be good enough for your customers if you want to create a truly innovative product. You need to break down the primary job further - in this case, and you might ask yourself why someone would want their car protected from dings and scratches while it's parked on the street at night.
3. Why this method generates better ideas than traditional research methods
Most companies do not ask themselves these types of questions when they're searching for ideas. Instead, they rely on inquiry methods that focus too much on features and product capabilities - rather than the job itself.
For example, if you were to use a customer interview as your primary research method, it would likely go something like this: "Do you own an alarm system for your car?" "Yes." "What does it do?” “It protects my car from dings and scratches while I'm parked on the street at night.”
This is a flawed approach - you need to ask yourself why someone would want their car protected from dings and scratches while they're parked on the street at night.
The jobs-to-be-done perspective is one of the most important concepts in business today - it's a simple idea that people hire products to get jobs done. This helps companies create new products and services that are better tailored to customer needs. To do this, you need to understand what the job really means.
This is why the jobs-to-be-done framework can help you generate more innovative ideas. It helps you continuously ask yourself "why?" until your idea becomes customer-focused - rather than product or feature-focused. This ensures that your company will create new products and services that are truly better tailored to customer needs.
4. Examples of companies that have used this strategy successfully in their marketing campaigns
A good example of this is the way that Apple broke down the process of taking photos into discrete steps and then used those insights to create a breakthrough camera called the iPhone. They didn't start with a "camera" idea; they started by understanding how people were trying to get jobs done and made it better.
Companies that apply the jobs-to-be-done perspective to their innovation efforts have a better chance of creating products and services that truly solve customer problems. Not only will this help you gain market share from competitors, but it will also give your company an advantage over other companies that haven't yet embraced this idea.
Wrap Up:
In conclusion, the Jobs-to-be-Done Theory is a great tool for identifying and generating ideas that differentiate your company from its competitors. By applying this idea to all of your innovation efforts, you can ensure that your entire organization creates better products and services based on customer needs. To learn more about the details of this process, check out strategyn.com/jobs-to-be-done/.
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