Jobs to Be Done: A Framework for Building Better Products

6. Feb.35 Min. Lesezeit

Jobs to Be Done framework explained by Anthony Ulwick – Visual representation of the JTBD process for product innovation.

Management Summary: Discover the Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) framework, a customer-centric approach to innovation that focuses on understanding the "jobs" customers are "hiring" products to do. Learn how to identify these jobs, segment your market based on customer needs, and develop products that truly meet those needs.

Understanding the Jobs to Be Done Framework

The Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) framework is a powerful approach to innovation that shifts the focus from product features or demographics to understanding the underlying needs and motivations of customers. Instead of asking, "Who is our customer?" JTBD asks, "What job is the customer hiring our product to do?"

Anthony "Tony" Ulwick, the creator of Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI) and the CEO of Strategyn, was the first to introduce Clayton Christensen, the late professor at Harvard Business School, to the concept of Jobs to Be Done. Christensen later helped popularize the framework, making it one of the most widely used methodologies in innovation and product development. You can learn more about Clayton Christensen on his Wikipedia page.

In a recent interview on Startuprad.io, Anthony Ulwick shared valuable insights on how businesses can use the JTBD framework to reduce risk, improve customer satisfaction, and build market-leading products.

Our Sponsor Vanta

Vanta automates security and compliance for frameworks like ISO 27001, SOC 2, and more—so you’re always audit-ready without the stress and manual work. No more endless spreadsheets, no last-minute panic. With real-time monitoring and automated security questionnaires, Vanta saves you time, effort, and money—so you can focus on growing your business.

Over 9,000 companies, including Atlassian, Flo Health, and Quora, already trust Vanta to manage security seamlessly.

Make compliance simple—get $1,000 off now at vanta.com/startupradio.

The Core Principles of JTBD

Focus on the Job: Understand the core job your customer wants to accomplish.
Identify Customer Needs: Define the desired outcomes and unmet needs associated with that job.
Develop Solutions: Create products that effectively address those unmet needs.

Implementing JTBD in Product Development

Steps to Identify Customer Jobs

Choose a Market: Define your target market based on a group of people and the job they are trying to get done.
Create a Job Map: Break down the job into its component steps and identify the desired outcomes for each step.
Conduct Quantitative Research: Survey customers to determine the importance and satisfaction levels for each outcome.
Identify Unmet Needs: Analyze the data to pinpoint the most important and least satisfied outcomes.

Aligning Products with Customer Outcomes

Prioritize Unmet Needs: Focus on addressing the most important and underserved needs.
Design for Success: Develop features and functionalities that directly address those unmet needs.
Measure and Iterate: Track customer satisfaction and continuously improve your product based on feedback.

Case Studies: JTBD in Action

During the Startuprad.io interview, Anthony Ulwick discussed how various companies have successfully implemented JTBD to develop innovative products. One notable example he shared was how a medical device company used JTBD to create a new surgical tool that significantly improved patient outcomes.

The Video Podcast Will Go Live on Thursday, February 6th, 2025

The video is available up to 24 hours before to our channel members.

Anthony Ulwick discussing Outcome-Driven Innovation – Exclusive interview on Startuprad.io about ODI and JTBD methodologies.

The Audio Podcast

You can subscribe to our podcasts here. Find our podcast on your favorite podcasting app or platform. Here are some of the links to subscribe.

Benefits of the JTBD Approach

Reduced Risk: By focusing on unmet needs, companie
s increase the likelihood of developing successful products.
Enhanced Customer Satisfaction: Products aligned with customer jobs lead to greater satisfaction and loyalty.
Improved Innovation: JTBD helps identify opportunities for innovation and differentiation.

Challenges and How to Overcome Them

Identifying the Right Job: Defining the appropriate level of abstraction for the job can be challenging.
Conducting Effective Research: Gathering accurate and insightful customer data requires careful planning and execution.
Organizational Alignment: Implementing JTBD requires a shift in mindset and a commitment to customer-centricity.

Conclusion

The Jobs to Be Done framework is a valuable tool for companies looking to develop products that truly meet customer needs. By understanding the jobs customers are trying to get done, businesses can create products that are not only successful but also innovative and impactful.

Leave a review, share and comment on the episode!

Special Offer:

We have a special deal with ModernIQs.com, where Startuprad.io listeners can create two free seo optimized blog posts per month in less than a minute. You will get the two free posts for your blog each month only when you use the link in the show notes. This is exclusive for our audience https://moderniqs.com/create-an-account/?res_aff=startupradio Note: You need to subscribe while on the link, otherwise you don't get 2 pieces.

Episode Transcript

Narrator [00:00:05]:

Welcome to start up rad dot io, your podcast and YouTube blog covering the German startup scene with news, interviews, and live events.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:00:20]:

Hello and welcome everybody. This is Joe from start up rate dot io, your startup podcast and YouTube blog from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, bringing you today another episode in our series of entrepreneurship. Therefore, I would like to welcome Anthony, who actually goes by the name of Tony. Hey. How you doing?

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:00:40]:

Joe, how's it going? I'm doing well. Thank you.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:00:43]:

I'm also doing good. Glad to have you as a guest here. We'll talk about innovation today, for the very simple reason. You have quite a history in working on innovation and innovation consulting. You have published in Howard Business Review, and you are the creator of outcome driven innovation, which is pretty cool. But before that, can you tell take us a little bit through your CV, what you've done in the past, and how you arrived at the knowledge you you want to share with us today?

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:01:21]:

Sure. I'd be happy to, Joe. Thank you. Yeah. My career started back, at IBM in 19 eighties. I worked there for 10 years from 81 till 91, and, I have an engineering background, MBA. I was working on a product called the PC Junior, if anyone's familiar with that. The PC Junior was supposed to compete with Apple's home computer.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:01:46]:

It was gonna change and revolutionize the way people view home computing. But, instead, the day after the product was introduced, the headlines in the Wall Street Journal read the PC junior is a flop. And, Joe, it was. It took us about a year to reconcile and come to grips with the fact that it was a failed product, and it cost IBM about $1,000,000,000. Now this is my first product I had worked on, and, I didn't realize that that kind of thing happened all the time. I wondered, you know, how a company like IBM with all its vast resources could make such a poor investment. But I realized it wasn't just IBM. It was many companies since and it's oddly enough, it's still not back in the 19 eighties.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:02:32]:

Right? It's still happening today where companies often create products that that fail in the market. Mhmm. And, that really got my interest, especially the engineering made to figure out, how can we create a process that's more predictable so that we know that the products that we're creating will win in the market before we launch them. In fact, ideally, before we even start developing them, we wanna know that they're gonna win. So we're not creating products that will fail in the market, And that led me down the path to create the outcome driven innovation process.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:03:06]:

Mhmm. I see. I see. You said you are an engineer by training. Are you still running around in your house and fix stuff?

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:03:17]:

Yeah. In fact, in fact, I am.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:03:21]:

Yes. I see. So so basically, you were one of the IBM engineers trying to compete with Apple Home Computer. And in in the very, very early days of the personal computer. And you came up with theories, jobs to be done, and outcome driven innovation. Can you can you take us a little bit into this project, into this journey, how you started developing those frameworks, and where are they different?

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:03:52]:

Sure. Well, you know, back in the 19 eighties when I started looking around to see, well, what is available, you know, that was back in the early days of voice of voice of the customer, the house of quality in QFD, conjoint analysis. And I realized very quickly that there there is no process or there was no process for innovation. And, I thought, well, let's go create it. And what really occurred to me, in that PC Junior failure was how the folks at The Wall Street Journal knew the very next day that the product was a failure. It was, like, clearly, they were using some set of metrics to judge the value of the product that we did not use to build the product. And the thought was, would it be possible to understand the metrics people are gonna use to judge the value of your product before you start creating it. Right? And that way I can I can say, hey? I know I'm creating a lot more value than my competing products.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:04:50]:

And if I can prove that to myself, then I should feel much more confident that the investments I'm making a much lower risk and that I will create a product that people will want. That was the basic thinking. Like, is that possible? And I thought, well, it had to be possible, but, it's been escaping people. What really connected the dots for me was the quote from Theodore Levitt. People don't want the quarter inch drill. They want a quarter inch hole. And I thought, well, this gives us an option. Right? We don't have to study how to create a better drill.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:05:26]:

Why don't we study the underlying process of creating a quarter inch hole? Now we can go study a process because as an engineer, I love that. Right? You can study I was on the manufacturing line studying the manufacturing process process. Right? We automate things and you eliminate variability and you reduce defects. And I thought if you could study the what we eventually call the customer's job to be done and break it down to its component parts and figure out how do they measure success along each step of the way, then we could create solutions that got the job done better. And it's a solution a quarter inch drill, maybe not. Maybe it's something else. Let's not assume with the solution upfront. Let's instead focus on what problems customers are trying to solve.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:06:12]:

And, again, the key there is viewing the problem as a process the customer is trying to execute so that you can start applying 6 Sigma thinking, lean thinking, statistical process control thinking to solve the problem.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:06:27]:

Okay. So so, basically, your thought was, you want to understand the customer and the process they are using to solve a problem. So, basically, then your product, the the the quarter inch drill, would fit in. Is that about right?

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:06:47]:

It might fit in. Right? Let's not assume that it will. Right? Let, let's study the job of creating a quarter inch hole and measure figure out how do people measure success when creating a quarter in troll. Well, I wanna I wanna start at the right location. You know, I wanna make sure I don't throw I I don't make the hole too big, too wide, too deep. I wanna make sure I don't hit it at an angle. Right? As I have to hit it at 90 degrees. I wanna minimize likelihood that, burrs occur, little wooden spurs when I'm making the hole.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:07:22]:

Right? There's a whole bunch of metrics that you think about, and and maybe there's a better solution. Maybe it's a hole punch. Maybe it's a laser. Maybe it's it's something we haven't, even thought of yet from a technology standpoint. Right? Maybe it's time to write In a very controlled experiment. I can see what you did when you were a kid playing in the in the garage.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:07:44]:

Don't tell anyone. I think I understood the idea. Can you give us an example? Can we make up an example? Like, really that so that our audience starts to understand what is the framework all about and how could I apply to to an everyday problem to something something different than a whole?

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:08:05]:

Yeah. Absolutely. Well, you know, the key thing to think here is that, it goes back to the basic reason why people buy products. The way we say it now, people buy products to get a job done. Right? What we wanna know is, well, what is that job? And then can we break it down into its component parts using what we call a job map? And then go even step lower and understand needs at this we call it the outcome level. So the example can be preparing a a meal at home. We've we've all do this. Right? Or cook a meal.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:08:37]:

And, there's metrics you use to judge if it's going well or not. Like, you you may all of a sudden say, oh, man. I I just burnt part of the meal. It got too hot on one side of the the pot. Right?

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:08:52]:

Mhmm.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:08:52]:

Well, the need is you wanna minimize the likelihood of burning the meal. Right? More specific, I wanna minimize likelihood of overcooking the meal or undercooking it or minimize likelihood that it's not cooked evenly. I wanna minimize time it takes to portion out the the meal. I wanna minimize like a default for portioning or under portioning. Right? You can start laying all these metrics in place that that say, hey. If I had the right toolset, I can create a meal perfectly, right, where everything just comes out just fine. Right? And in most situations, there's a 100 different metrics or more, especially when you get to some more complicated things. Preparing a meal is somewhat complicated, oddly enough, but performing a surgical procedure is is far more.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:09:44]:

But uncovering what those metrics are is the first step. Mhmm. Right. We want the list of 100 metrics. That tells us what the needs are. Now what we don't know yet is which needs are unmet. Right? So here we rely on quantitative research to go figure out, from customers which of these outcomes are really important and not well satisfied with today's solutions. So we ask people what solution are you using, and what is the importance level of each outcome in the current satisfaction level.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:10:19]:

And from there, we can figure out which needs are unmet. Right? The the goal here at a high level, the goal here is we wanna come up with a product that's going to get the job done significantly better, meaning 15 to 20% or more. That's the threshold we've determined really makes a difference. And you can think about this, Joe. Like, would you ever switch from your favorite brand if it's gonna get the job done 1% better or 2% better? Probably not. Right? There's gonna be some significant movement, and we have to be able to prove that the concept that we're about to go develop will address the top unmet needs significantly better than current solutions. So we have to know what all those needs are, which ones are unmet, and then systematically come up with solutions that will address those unmet needs.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:11:08]:

That was actually the first question that popped into my mind, going through those steps in in in jobs to be done. Understood. Where would be a place in this very big world here today for entrepreneurs listening to this, speaking different languages? Where would you think there is like a big place we can find jobs, problems to be solved? Would you look on Reddit?

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:11:39]:

Well, you're you're asking a really important question, which is which problem, meaning which market should I even go after? I think that's what you're saying. Right?

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:11:51]:

I want to help the audience to guide them to places where they find really important jobs, meaning places. If they develop any kind of product, they'll very soon be able to make a living from that because no but not too many people care if you have a product that makes an annual revenue of a 1,000 US dollars. But if you're talking like 10,000,000 US dollars annual revenue, people are getting interested. Plus, you can make a living from that, a very good one, by the way. And that is something I want to help to guide our audience towards.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:12:33]:

Well, you're on the right point. Because if you pick a market that's not attractive, you're going to be you're gonna fail even if you came up with a decent product. Right? So you need to pick a a good market. So how do we define a market? Some people define markets around a technology or a product or a vertical or geography, a territory, but we're gonna define a market around the jobs we don't lens. So we say, if people buy products and services to get a job done, let's define a market as a group of people and the job they're trying to get done.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:13:11]:

And my understanding would be if you have people with the same problem, it doesn't make a lot of difference if you have the right product, if they are located in San Francisco, in Shanghai, or in Stuttgart.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:13:24]:

That's exactly right. That's the beauty of jobs to be done. Right? There's people around the globe who have the same problem. Right? Like parents, a group of people, right, trying to pass on life lessons to children. That's a job to be done. That would be a market. So as an entrepreneur, you could say, I can go after parents who are trying to pass on life lessons to children, and that's the market I'm gonna serve. Alright.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:13:49]:

Or you could say, hey. I'm gonna go after interventional cardiologist and help them restore blood flow in an artery, and I'm gonna create a product that does that. Or I'm going to work with chefs and create products that will help them prepare a meal. You you pick. Right? You can pick from 1,000, tens of 1,000 of possible markets. So which one's most attractive? Well, first off, one in which you probably have the capability to go address. That's that's probably key. If if if you have no skill set in that space, you're gonna be, spending a lot of time experimenting and getting things wrong.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:14:28]:

So pick something in your Bailey weight. Right? 2nd, what kind of job would you rather focus on? 1, that's, executed by 10,000 people around the globe or one that's executed by 300,000,000 people around the globe. Right? So understanding how many people are getting that job done is critical. Understanding, are they underserved? Understanding if they're willing to pay more to get the job done better. This helps you choose from all the possible markets to one that's going to be attractive, which would be one that you have the capability to address. It's large. A lot of people are trying to get the job done. They're underserved.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:15:10]:

Today's solutions aren't, serving the market as well as they could. That would be a place to start.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:15:16]:

Trying to pick your brain here again, where would you personally go right now to find a job to be done? For me personally, it would be, some place where a lot of people are and writing about the problem. That's why I, for example, threw in Reddit as an example. We we have, like, a few more places we could find, jobs to be done. Maybe not necessarily the emergency room of of a big hospital trying to avoid accidents or something.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:15:50]:

Joe, any of those sources are great. Like, you can use your imagination to say, and I've been using AI for this. You can ask AI, with the right, prompting. Like, we've we've we've created our own GPTs that have, ODI thinking built into it, and we can ask, you know, give me a list of the top ten problems that product managers have. I've I've created this list. Right? And it comes up with those, that list of problems, and you can help them solve 1 of them, 2 of them, or try to solve all of them. But the key thing is pick pick your group of people first because if you say, hey. I just wanna pick a job to be done.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:16:33]:

It could be for anybody. It's so broad. What's often easier, especially if you wanna go on Reddit, you know, pick an audience. Where where are parents struggling? Where where are parents with, new children struggling to get the job done, or what jobs are they trying to get done? Now we're down to something. Yeah. You got that right. Trying to get to sleep at night and stay asleep at night. That's a big deal.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:17:00]:

And and underserved. Right? If you're a parent with young kids, you know that. So it's it's narrowing it down. Right? And that's that's the market selection part of the process. It's just choosing which problem do I want to help a group of people solve.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:17:18]:

And what will be the next step? You have a a market, a group of people. You have a problem, a job they need to be done. And how would you then approach the next steps?

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:17:29]:

We wanna really understand that problem at a deep granular granular level. So, we wrote an article in Harvard Business Review back in 2008 that introduced what we call the job map. The job map is not a process map. It's it's it's the opposite. Right? A process map lays out what people are doing in solution space. A job map lays out what people are trying to do in problem space, so it's devoid of the solution. So, you know, surgeon may be trying to remove an anatomical structure, so they have to gain access to the vascular system. They have to find, the pathway to where they're gonna go.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:18:12]:

They have to navigate to get there. They have to close off the plus supply to the structure. They have to remove the structure. But I I'm not saying how they're doing any of that. Right? But this is how this is the process they're going through. This is what they're trying to do to get the job done. So this is this goes a long way because if you just create a job map, and this can be done with a handful of interviews with customers, if you can create that job map, you you know right up front, are there parts of the job where people are struggling more to get the job than than others? We find this many markets, there's steps in the job that nobody's getting them. We find that most products only get parts of jobs done.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:19:00]:

So all this is great news for entrepreneurs who say, how am I gonna win in the market? Well, you're gonna get more of the job done better than the competing solutions. Those steps that they're ignoring, you're going to tackle.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:19:13]:

Is it? Would it be just rephrasing you go through a process, for example, the surgery you described, and then, interview a few of those surgeons, and they describe different problems, jobs to be done, problems to be solved. And you basically make a list, map them on the process. And the more people you have, the more you understand this is a big problem for many. This is a big problem. This is a minor problem. This is just a problem for one person. Would it would it be something like that?

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:19:50]:

Well, I'm gonna caution you in the the language that you're using there because they're all all the the hierarchy is not all jobs to be done. Right? There's only one job to be done. Right? This is where people get confused. Right? Removing the anatomical structure, that's the job to be done. Right? Surgeons may try to there's other jobs they try to get done, but you have to pick the one that you're gonna go focus on. So removing the anatomical structure would be a great job. So that becomes the job to be done, then you break it down into job steps. So we call these job steps job steps because they're not the job to be done.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:20:28]:

Right? The job is this big thing. The steps are gaining access to the vasculature, finding the pathway, navigating to the pathway, shutting off the blood supply. Right? Those are all part of removing anatomical structure. Right? So we lay out that job map, and then we go a level lower, and we call these the outcomes, the customer's desired outcomes. These are the real needs. These are the granular level needs. So as I'm trying to, gain access to the structure, I want to, you know, minimize the likelihood that I cause damage to surrounding tissue as I'm navigating through the vasculature. I wanna minimize selective bleeding when I'm, transacting the the vessels that go to the structure that I'm trying to remove.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:21:22]:

Again, there's a 100 very specific granular outcomes or needs that surgeons are trying to, address when they're getting the job done. Right. We want that entire list. So when we go talk to surgeons, we ask them to take us through the journey. I like thinking about like this, Joe. I I asked them to go on this very slow, slow motion journey with us to tell us what are these steps they go through. And then for every step, what are the outcomes they're trying to solve? What's the next thing they're trying to do? What are they trying to avoid? And we build out this entire hierarchy of customer needs so we can understand the entire market of removing the anatomical structure. That gives us our basis of knowing what all the needs are in the market.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:22:13]:

Right? That's the first step. Next step is to figure out which of those are unmet. Right? So the first step is putting putting the model together. The beauty of this tutorial is once you put the model together, it's valid for years to come. Right. How long have surgeons been trying to remove an in anatomical structure? Decade. Centuries. Right?

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:22:35]:

Yep.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:22:36]:

And, how are they measuring success? They're using the same measures today that we they used 20, 30 years ago. What's different, the technologies that have come along to help them get the job done better raises their satisfaction level on these outcomes. And what we're trying to figure out at any given point in time is, well, which of these outcomes are really important and poorly satisfied? And if and we do that quantitatively. So we would take a survey, put it out to some number of of customers or potential customers, competitors' customers, and ask them to tell us how important each outcome is in the level of satisfaction using the solution they're use they they have today. And from there, we can calculate it out. We use what we call the opportunity algorithm. If an outcome is very important and the difference between the importance and satisfaction is great, we say the needs unmet. So in other words, if 90% of the population says this is very or extremely important and only 20% of the population is saying this is very or extremely satisfied, we're gonna flag that as an unmet need.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:23:47]:

And what we're looking for in the market at any given time is, are there 10 or 15 or 20 or 30 unmet needs that we could potentially go better address to get the job done better. So we identify those needs, and then we work to come up with the solutions that address them. And if we can do that successfully, we know we've created a product concept that will get the job done significantly better within the market. All this is doable before I spend the first development dollar because I'm proving on paper that the the idea I have is gonna move the needle along all these important dimensions just like in the IBM example. Now over the metrics that the the folks were using to judge the value of the product, once I know them, I can just make sure I'm designing the product to address those metrics so that it's like you're stacking the odds in your favor. The way I like thinking about it is this, what are the chances of a team randomly coming up with a solution that addresses the top 15 of it needs in the market if they don't know what those unmet needs are?

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:24:53]:

Mhmm. I see. I see. About 0. Right?

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:24:56]:

But Mhmm. What are the chances that of them coming up with a successful product if they know and agree on the top 15 unmet needs in the market? It goes up dramatically, and that's why the process we use has an 86% success rate because we can prove whether or not we should even enter the market. If we don't come up with a concept that's gonna get the job done better, then don't build it.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:25:22]:

Yes. Exactly. Unless you needed to to build the whole package for client, that that would be a possibility, but then you wouldn't be a startup anymore.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:25:32]:

No. That's right. You're you're you're growing from the core at that at that point.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:25:37]:

Mhmm. I see. And let us know that we understood a little bit jobs to be done. That's basically a framework to analyze demands for your clients. And how would you then proceed with when you have jobs where the market potential is big enough?

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:25:58]:

When you say the job potential is big enough, meaning there's a large number of people that are underserved.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:26:05]:

Yes. Exactly.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:26:06]:

Right. Well, that's what we just discovered in that quantitative research analysis that I just described. Right? We do that every one of those outcomes. So we're getting data on a 100 different outcomes. We know precisely which outcomes are really important and that will satisfy. So we know for every outcome, if we satisfy this, that will that will impact 5% of the market. If we satisfy that one, they'll satisfy or impact 80% of the market. Let's let's do that one.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:26:37]:

What we're looking for is what I call the most efficient path to growth. You're trying to figure out which needs are are underserved across the biggest population. So if there's a need that's underserved across 90 or a 100% of the population, that's where you wanna focus. Right? It's gonna it's gonna impact everybody. And if you can find 10 of those needs that are cut across the entire customer population, that's the path to growth. Right? So discovering what those needs are that are unmet across the largest population is is the goal of the research. Right? And once you have the answer, you know where to go focus. Again, we're flipping this around instead of hoping my my product addresses the top 15 unmet needs.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:27:22]:

We're gonna make sure they address the top 15 limit needs because we know what they are.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:27:27]:

I think I have a pretty good understanding as well as our audience now of the jobs to be done theory. I would be curious because you've been already talking about AI here. We are maybe in the year where AI is really going to grow up to really solve problems. How do you, your company, right now use AI for those steps for doing market research and so on and so forth?

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:27:59]:

Yeah. It's a great question. Yeah. We've been on this since, well, November a couple years ago, so it's been over 2 years. And, I think, like most people, our first view was how how does AI help us do what we currently do better. Right? And, so we've been we've been on that path. What we do is we encourage everybody in our company to use AI for that purpose and experiment with it and try it out. We've, given them access to learning, about AI.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:28:31]:

In in our monthly all hands meetings, we we call on people to give us examples of how they're using AI. So we're really encouraging this from a cultural standpoint and getting people indoctrinated in it. But in a more sophisticated way, we're trying to figure out, well, well, can we can we collect the set of needs through AI? Right? Can we program this in such a way? Now the interesting thing about our approach is that it's very rules rules based. Like, our outcome statements have 28 different rules that they follow. If they're gonna be stable over time, they can't contain adjectives. I can there's a bunch of reasons behind every rule, but once we've pro we've programmed AI with all the rules, we have our own GPT, like I said, one for market definition, one for job mapping, one for outcome gathering, and and we query it. Now we see, can it come up with a set of needs statements? And it's pretty good, but you you wouldn't know it's pretty good unless you're an expert at collecting these kinds of statements and know what to look for. Right? So, anyway, I think it's some it'll clearly get better and better over time, but where we're at with it right now is I feel, the AI helps practitioners that know how to do ODI, helps them get it done faster, more effectively.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:30:02]:

But, it doesn't replace it yet. So I I think we're in pretty good shape from that standpoint for for a little bit. But, ultimately, what people wanna do is to get answers to all the questions that ODI helps answer. Like, how do I differentiate myself from my top competitor? Am I am I satisfying the needs to a great enough degree to make a difference? Right. Is there a segment of people that nobody's targeting that I could go after? Like, we we found, like, in the all terrain vehicle manufacturing space, for example, we found a segment that was about a quarter of the market that nobody was attacking. They didn't know it existed, from a needs perspective. This is why we do outcome based segmentation. You know, other groups of people that struggle in different ways to get the job done.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:30:51]:

We don't segment around demographics or psychographics or attitude to behaviors because those are all really just proxies for for segmenting around unmet needs. Right? So instead, we just segment around the unmet needs because we know what they are, and it gives us a whole insight into, different opportunities that we could potentially, go address. So, you know, I I think, you know, AI is gonna be it's gonna take a while before AI can do all that qualitative and quantitative work effectively. So, for now, it's a keen eye watching all the stuff, but, we're making our toolset and everything available to people so that it can start practicing and coming up the learning curve. And I think, you know, some of the entrepreneurs in the audience would like that. We built a certification site, training site that makes some of this stuff possible as a starting point.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:31:45]:

Jobs to be done approach. I think we now heard about it. How would it help entrepreneurs to mitigate risk? And do you believe also investors would appreciate a proven methodology to their approach?

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:32:04]:

Yeah. Well, we we know on the latter question there, definitely, yes. We we know a number of, companies who've taken the data and presented it to their investors to help secure funding.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:32:19]:

Mhmm.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:32:19]:

And they find it very impressive because, they go on with the story of saying, hey. We're gonna beat this competitor along these dimensions. Here's the top end that needs. Here's the data from the market, right, that says we're gonna get the job done 15, 20% better or more. So they can make that argument. So it's they're not investing in hope. Right? They're investing in something that they know is possible because they've mitigated the risk.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:32:46]:

Do you make the, the AI tools you've been talking about, do you make them available for people to use?

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:32:55]:

We're we're going to. They're we're still testing them. We're trying to put the, you know, the the the right design in place to make it useful. So we're we're we're getting there. But what we do have already is we have, all the rule sets and everything that we use to create the, the prompts and things like that. That's all. That's all part of our certification program.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:33:25]:

I see. My next question would be because everybody, especially if your start ups scale up, if you are not yet an established company, you always feel the competition. How do you think start ups can leverage the jobs to be done and outcome driven innovation for themselves to compete in the market?

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:33:47]:

Well, the very first thing they should do is make sure they define their market as a group people and a job to be done, then co create the job map. Sit with customers. They can do this in a couple of days and layout what job they're trying to get done and what those steps are. And even before you get to the outcome level, you can see, are my products getting the entire job done. Are there competing products getting the entire job done? Are people cobbling together solutions? Is there a platform play? Are we leading people to execute the process in in in a iterative order where they're gonna go back and iterate and waste time because we don't have the steps in the right order? And oddly enough, we see that quite a picture where products force people to do things inefficiently, which we wanna eliminate. Job maps help point that out as well. So just getting started with that is is key. But as an entrepreneur and and I'm an entrepreneur.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:34:49]:

I started the strategy back in 91, and we've had different products sets since then. The first thing I do is I go get the dataset so we know where the unmet needs are, and we can focus on the right segments, the the right unmet needs. So we know we're gonna win in the market. And that's why, you know, we've been around 33, 3rd 34 years, doing this type of work.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:35:14]:

Every time I'm talking about tools, processes, what I always have in mind is how can people make mistakes? What are the most common mistakes here? Because I have seen pitch deck over pitch deck over pitch deck, and the people are addressing people well educated, higher income, 25 to 45. That's it. And and that's usually when I start scratching my head. Why, guys? You gotta do better than that. What are the the the the common mistakes you have seen people making with the jobs to be done theory so far?

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:35:53]:

Yeah. As they start applying it, they stumble at every step. I'll just start by saying that. And the very first step is to identify what's my market. Mhmm. And, again, we define a market as a group of people and the job to be done. This sounds like it should be easy. It's not easy.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:36:12]:

So for example, you could be a kettle maker, and you could say, well, I'm in the kettle market. Right? And so you go to your customers and say, why do you use my kettle? Well, I use it so I can heat water. Great. Alright. So then what happens? Is it part of a bigger job? Yeah. It is actually. You know, I use that water and I combine it with some coffee and put in this cup and add some sugar and some cream, and now I've created a hot beverage for consumption. Right? So as the kettle maker, now you have to decide.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:36:47]:

Do I wanna just make kettles and get part of this bigger job done, or do I want to try to get the bigger job done? Where do I want to define my level of abstraction? Right? Nespresso, Keurig, you know, they get the entire job done, so you can create a hot beverage for consumption. But people still buy pots or or or kettles just to heat water very quickly because maybe they're gonna make soup or tea or something different. So they have to decide amongst that level of abstraction where they want to play. Now what we always recommend to people is we say, you wanna it's okay to go beyond your core. Right? So if you're the kettle maker, it's okay to go beyond heating the water to the right temperature. As long as you still include heating the water to the right temperature as part of that bigger job. So if I eventually said if I went all the way too far and said, my job is to prepare dinner, then I I I'm not gonna get the granular level of detail on heating water to the right temperature. I have gone too far.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:38:00]:

But if I stay with you know, I wanna create a hot beverage for consumption, you're probably gonna be safe. And you could say, I don't wanna go beyond the kettle market. I just wanna help people create, you know, get to the right temperature as quickly as possible and and stay there and cool down when they need it. You know? And they could just get all the outcomes just on that. It's very narrow focused job. Right? And and that's a choice. It's a strategic choice. Where do you wanna go? Do you have the capability to get the entire job done? We know that solutions evolve to get the entire job done.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:38:35]:

Are you gonna be the platform play, or are you gonna be a feature on someone's platform? So tough questions.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:38:42]:

When you've been talking about that, I was wondering, a lot of startups out there work in some form or derivative of agile development. How could they integrate jobs to be done, outcome driven innovation in this process?

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:39:03]:

Well, the way I like to think about it is, jobs to be done in ODI make agile more agile. Because to me, agile more or less begins when you start developing the product. Right? You wanna develop it in the most efficient way, but you have to be developing the right product. Everything before agile and everything before development is what I call the innovation process. Right? The output of the innovation process is the concept that you know is gonna win in the market before you start developing it. Right? That should be the the output. Then you take the concept. You put it in development.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:39:37]:

That's when you apply agile. And the beauty here is you're not iterating on what the product does anymore because you already defined that up front. So the only thing you're iterating on is the design. Right? So, you know, how do I make sure it's easy to install and set up and interface with and clean and maintain and upgrade? Right? So you're focused on what we call the consumption chain jobs. Right? And so instead of iterating on what the product does while you're developing it, you've you've quit that step, and that's that's huge. Right?

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:40:12]:

Yeah. It is.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:40:13]:

Right? So you you and I know, like, in lean start up, for example, you know, they often say, hey. Go ahead and hypothesize the market, the product, and the needs all at once. It's like trying to solve a very complex simultaneous equation, extremely difficult to solve, unless you use some mathematical principles to say, let's just solve 1 piece at a time. Let's make the market a not a variable, but let's make it a constant. Let's pick the market. It's parents trying to pass on life lessons to children. Right? So now that's a constant. So now let's come up with the needs.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:40:51]:

Right? So we can study all the needs associated with passing on life lessons. Now that becomes a constant. Now let's come up with a solution. We know the needs. We know which are unmet, and now we can solve the equation. Now we can achieve product market fit. Right? Now the thing that we're creating, we know is going to address the unmet needs in the market. Right? That's the beauty of the approach, and it just brings, you know, brings a little science to the process and helps mitigate risk.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:41:20]:

I I have on 2 more questions for you, but one of them, I would have I would need a job to be done because, the startups have then, if they decide to use the framework, a job to measure the success of the implementation, how of jobs to be done, outcome driven innovation. How would they do it?

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:41:43]:

Yeah. Well, you can measure the success along a number of different ways. You can measure success early on saying, you know, is the market I've chosen an attractive market? That would be a measure. Do I end understand the entire job the customer is trying to get done? That could be a metric. Do I have all the needs associated with the market? Do I know which ones are unmet? Do I know if there's segments of people with different unmet needs? And are my solutions designed specifically to address those needs? And the final measure is, am I gonna move the level of satisfaction so I'm gonna get the job done significantly better? Right? Just like I've said right up front. Right? The goal of the innovation process is to come up with a solution that you know with a high degree of certainty is gonna win in the market before you start developing it, not after it's launched like the PC junior. Right? So that's that's the ultimate measure right there. Does my product concept move the needle? Can I prove it?

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:42:50]:

I see. So the the last question would be only what resources or training would you recommend for entrepreneurs interested in mastering jobs to be done, outcome driven innovation methodologies?

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:43:04]:

Yeah. Jeff, that's a great question. You know, we spent, the last 5 years, and I've I spent a couple years, me personally, just writing more more material to help train practitioners. It's all, located in our, on our website. It's called ODi Pro. You can Google it and quickly find it, but it includes the certification courses that help you become a good practitioner. But probably more important, it has a whole bunch of webinars and and, instructions in there on how to make it happen. You know, how do you do an interview? And this is where entrepreneurs often struggle because they don't have the skill sets to go sit and talk to customers.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:43:50]:

They're not necessarily qualitative and quantitative research and data analysts and that sort of thing. But, but those are the skill type of skill sets that are required to make this stuff happen, and you should have them on your team, as any organization who's trying to, you know, win in the market.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:44:09]:

Well, I would say pretty good closing words. Thank you very much for being here, my guest. We had a little interruption, and I do have 22 year old boys and 25 year old boys here playing in the background. Just a room next to me to help the noise. It wasn't too bad. Tony, thank you very much. It was a pleasure having you as guest. We link down here in the show notes for everybody who'd like to learn more, something like your Wikipedia article, your LinkedIn profile, the website of your company, the jobs to be done framework, and 2 of your Harvard business review articles.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:44:46]:

Excellent. And there there is a free book at jobs to be done book dot com, a free, ebook or free audiobook. So that's also a possibility.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:44:54]:

Great. Awesome. So only thing left for me to say is thank you very much. It was a pleasure talking to you.

Tony Ulwick | Creator of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory & Strategyn CEO and Founder [00:45:00]:

Thank you, Joe. I appreciate it.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:45:03]:

Have a good day. Bye bye.

Jörn "Joe" Menninger | CEO and Founder Startuprad.io [00:45:09]:

That's all, folks. Find

STARTUPRAD.IO