We spend most of our time here at the Snippet sharing ideas about the softer skills of business life: communicating, persuading, listening, speaking, inspiring and motivating.
But this Snippet is squarely focused on the nerdier disciplines of innovation, product design, marketing and sales. If that’s not your cup of tea, you can stop here this week.
If your professional life requires you to care about these topics, keep going. I think you’ll enjoy – and find useful – this enlightening perspective.
The problem at hand: Most companies have tons of data and anecdotes on customer tastes and preferences, and they try to use this data for product design and marketing, but they still have a high degree of failure when it comes to innovation and customer acquisition.
As the HBR authors put forth in “Know Your Customers’ Jobs to Be Done”, this hyper-focus on correlation and knowing more about customers can take firms in the wrong direction.
What they really need to focus on is what the customer hopes to accomplish. This is what the authors call the job to be done.
We are all trying to get certain things done in certain parts of our lives. In general, we want to be healthier, happier, more productive, richer, smarter, and more attractive.
And when we buy a product (or service,) we essentially “hire” it to help us do a job. If it does the job well, we tend to hire that product again. If it doesn’t perform, we “fire” it and look for an alternative.
The theory of jobs to be done was developed in part as a complement to the theory of disruptive innovation since disruption theory doesn’t necessarily tell you how to create products and services that customers want to buy.
Successful innovations – that customers really want to buy – come from helping people solve real problems and move forward.
A “job to be done,” however, must be researched and investigated methodically and carefully. Here are some things to keep in mind as you try to uncover jobs to be done:
“Job” is shorthand for what an individual really seeks to accomplish in a given circumstance.
But this goal usually involves more than just a straightforward task; consider the experience a person is trying to create. Buying a home for first-time homebuyers is a much different “job” than buying a home for those looking to downsize.
The “circumstances” are more important than customer characteristics, product attributes, new technologies, or trends.
The competitive playing field can look very different when considering the customer’s buying circumstances. The competition may not be with other products or services, but instead, with simply doing nothing at all because all other alternatives appear unpalatable.
Good innovations solve problems that formerly had only inadequate solutions—or no solution.
Slight variations and improvements to existing solutions can make a big difference and move people to act. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, just find ways to make it roll with less friction. Don’t be afraid to experiment, test, and adjust.
Jobs are never simply about function—they have powerful social and emotional dimensions.
Don’t overlook the stress and strain of change, the idea of hope, or the promise of progress. We all buy emotionally, then justify with facts afterwards.
The persona-based, data-driven approach to product design and marketing can provide too many false positives and match too easily on demographics and job titles. That can lead to wasted time and dead ends.
Instead, identify jobs that customers are struggling to get done.
Design for them. Speak to them. And grow with them.
Have a great week.
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