HBR Know Your Customers "Jobs To Be Done"

Question 1

What is the problem with current innovation practices that led to the development of JTBD?

Answer 1

Data collected is specifically structured to show correlations

Question 2

Why is the traditional focus on data patterns an issue (or at least non-optimal)?

Answer 2

Patterns found don’t indicate a cause, and therefore don’t prescribe a specific action

“The fact that you’re 18 to 35 years old with a college degree does not cause you to buy a product,” Christensen says. “It may be correlated with the decision, but it doesn’t cause it. We developed this idea because we wanted to understand what causes us to buy a product, not what’s correlated with it. We realized that the causal mechanism behind a purchase is, ‘Oh, I’ve got a job to be done.’ And it turns out that it’s really effective in allowing a company to build products that people want to buy.”

Question 3

What is the added “data point” needed to make massive customer data useful?

Answer 3

What is the customer trying to do when using or “hiring” your product? The Job To Be Done!

Question 4

What analogy does JTBD use for what actually happens when a customer purchases a product?

Answer 4

Buying a product == “hiring” that product to help us do a job or achieve a goal

If it does poorly, we “fire” it, if it does well we keep it

Question 5

How does JTBD fit into the competitive response to innovation & disruption?

Answer 5

It expands upon “Disruptive Innovation” theory by providing a framework to create products & services customers want to buy.

It changes our focus from more data to the cause of a customer purchase decision.

Question 6

What perspective change on your own business purpose is inherent when moving to JTBD?

Answer 6

Business owners must shift their focal point from a perception of their business as production of a product or service, to a need filling product with it’s Jobs to be Done

Question 7

What does “Job” mean?

Answer 7

Shorthand for what an individual really seeks to accomplish in a given circumstance.

Consider the experience a person is trying to create. What the condo buyers sought was to transition into a new life, in the specific circumstance of downsizing—which is completely different from the circumstance of buying a first home.

Question 8

What makes a solution a “good” innovation?

Answer 8

It must solve a problem that had only inadequate or non-existent solutions: It is only when shoppers’ key criteria is met fully that it will succeed, otherwise you are continuing the cycle of inadequacy

Question 9

What nuances of jobs & customers have previous models of innovative competition ignored?

Answer 9

Social and emotional dimensions are absolutely crucial to understanding a customer & their “jobs”

EXAMPLE: Creating space in the condo for a dining room table reduced a very real anxiety that prospective buyers had. They could take the table with them if they couldn’t find a home for it. And having two years’ worth of storage and a sorting room on the premises gave condo buyers permission to work slowly through the emotions involved in deciding what to keep and what to discard. Reducing their stress made a catalytic difference.

Question 10

What development, strategic, & manufacturing inefficiency can JTDB solve?

Answer 10

Production of features that, though they me be assumed to be valuable and/or attractive, are not driven by the context & content of the customers’ JTBD will lead to wasted resources across the entire organization. A deep understanding of a job allows you to innovate without guessing what trade-offs your customers are willing to make.

Question 11

What is the clear implication of JTBD for product design (in the context of customer interaction)?

Answer 11

It’s essential to create the right set of experiences for the purchase and use of the product and then integrate those experiences into a company’s processes.

Question 12

How does JTBD impact the internal processes of an org?

Answer 12

Processes are often hard to see, but they matter profoundly - processes are a critical part of an organization’s unspoken culture.
Focusing processes on the job to be done provides clear guidance to everyone on the team.

It’s a simple but powerful way of making sure a company doesn’t unintentionally abandon the insights that brought it success in the first place

Question 13

Favorite JTBD quote?????

Answer 13

“Whereas the jobs-to-be-done point of view causes you to crawl into the skin of your customer and go with her as she goes about her day, always asking the question as she does something: Why did she do it that way?“

Question 14

Sources

Answer 14

https: //hbr.org/2016/09/know-your-customers-jobs-to-be-done
http: //hbswk.hbs.edu/item/clay-christensens-milkshake-marketing
http: //www.forbes.com/sites/stephenwunker/2012/02/07/six-steps-to-put-christensens-jobs-to-be-done-theory-into-practice
http: //innovatorstoolkit.com/content/technique-1-jobs-be-done

Question 15

What are the implications for branding with JTBD?

Answer 15

It highlights the importance of “purpose branding”—building an entire brand around a particular job-to-be-done. Quite simply, purpose branding involves naming the product after the purpose it serves.

Question 16

What are the types of “Jobs”? How do those types breakdown?

Answer 16

• Functional job aspects—the practical and objective customer requirements.
• Emotional job aspects—the subjective customer requirements related to feelings and perception.
  
  • –Personal dimension -> how the customer feels about the solution.
  • –Social dimension -> how the customer believes he or she is perceived by others while using the solution.

Question 17

What are the structural aspects of how “Jobs” are naturally organized? (hint: Think spatial)

Answer 17

There is the main job to be done, surrounded by a massive web of “related” jobs

EXAMPLE: Say the main JTBD is to clean one’s teeth and gums. Then related jobs might be to create lasting fresh breath, whiten one’s teeth and even achieve such other grooming objectives as a clean face and/or neat eyebrows.

Question 18

From a neurological/evolutionary perspective, what drives the categories organizations should focus on to make a product successful? What are those categories?
What is the implication for orgs?

Answer 18

We have evolved three distinct structural areas of the brain: reptiliian/fight-or-flight brain, emotional brain, and cognitive/intellectual/reason driven brain

Make solutions that appeal to all three parts of the brain—especially the emotional and intellectual since (only a small set of solutions are truly a matter of life or death).

Question 19

If your org is competing against other orgs already using JTBD, what strategy is most likely to succeed?

Answer 19

Focus on the area of customers’ brains/decision making factors that the industry is ignoring or undervaluing.

EXAMPLE: If your industry is mainly focused on the functional aspects of the JTBD, then differentiate yourself with the emotional aspect. Make the surgical instrument look really cool with an appealing design and shape that fits the hand better.

Question 20

What is the core difference in outcomes for typical, stagnant industry competitors versus those using JTBD?

Answer 20

The typical model focuses on linear step change driven by a focus on an understanding of an orgs purpose as the creation and improvement of their product -> weak/slow change.

The JTBD model focuses on implementing what ever change is needed to get and stay “hired” by customers, driven by aa self-image centered around helping customers to get a specific job done, within an emotional and intellectual set of contextual variables.

Question 21

According to the Innovators Toolkit, what is the key takeaway for the JTBD method?

Answer 21

They are completely neutral of the solutions you create (your products and services).
While a customer JTBD remains fairly stable over time, your products and services should change at strategic intervals as you strive to provide ever increasing value.

Question 22

What are the steps included in implementing JTBD?

Answer 22

1. Identify a Focus Market.
2. Identify Jobs Customers Are Trying to Get Done
3. Categorize the Jobs to be Done
4. Create Job Statements
5. Prioritize the JTBD Opportunities

Question 23

How can marketers use JTBD to find a focus/target market?

Answer 23

Use one of the following organic growth approaches & audit the target industry’s current competitors’ growth type:

Core Growth - meeting unent outcome expectations associated with a job that customers want to acheive
Related Job Growth - bundling solutions that achieve the outcome expectations of more than one main or related JTBD.

New Jobs Growth - expanding the solution space to accomplish different JTBDs. It’s the product of evolving technology and change, and it’s more difficult to achieve than core or related job growth.

Disruptive Growth - focuses on what the literature and innovation experts call nonconsumption. Certain solutions are available to certain classes of people, but not all or more people.

Question 24

What are the four drivers of non-consumption?

Answer 24

Price
Time
Skill
Access to tech/solution

EXAMPLE: The Whitestrips example fits all four criteria. Prior to Whitestrips, it was too expensive to whiten one’s teeth. It took too much time. Individuals didn’t have access to the needed technology, and they didn’t have the skills to apply that technology at home.

Question 25

What is both by definition and in practice the most difficult new market entry/growth strategy to accomplish?

Answer 25

DISRUPTIVE GROWTH!
This is because it entails cannibalizing what you and others in your industry do. Other examples of disruptive growth are home pregnancy tests, online stock trading, and self-administered medical monitoring and treatment devices.

Question 26

What is a “Job Statement”?

Answer 26

Key components of a job statement are an action verb, the object of the action, and clarification of the context in which the job is performed. Manage personal finances at home is a job statement. So is clean clothes at home, as shown in the exhibit. Listen to music while jogging is also an example of a job statement.

EXAMPLES:
Manage personal finances at home
Clean clothes at home

Question 27

When identifying the job to solve, what determines the job your org should focus on ?

Answer 27

1) An understanding of how important each job is, as a function of 2) how satisfied customers are with the current solutions, 3) the potential for truly new solutions, and 4) the org capability to better meet the customers expected outcomes for a given job.

Question 28

Underserved JTBD’s indicate which growth strategy would be successful?

Answer 28

Innovation solution - make the existing solution better

Question 29

Over-served items indicate which growth strategy would be successful?

Answer 29

Disruptive solution - remake the solution so it becomes available to those who can’t afford the existing solution

Question 30

If the core jobs seem to be served well, what is should an org focus on?

Answer 30

Identify the array of “related” jobs, i.e. for a property mgmt company a related job might be identification of new properties to acquire