‘Once you understand the customer’s Job to Be Done, it brings into sharp relief the true competition you face to be hired. This provides critical information for how to innovate to make your solution more attractive than any competitor’s.’

‘Seeing your customer through a job lens highlights the real competition you face, which often extends well beyond your traditional rivals.’

‘Closely studying how customers use your products often yields important insights into the jobs, especially if they are using them in unusual and unexpected ways.’

‘Developing a full understanding of the job can be done by assembling a kind of storyboard that describes in rich detail the customer’s circumstances, moments of struggle, imperfect experiences, and corresponding frustrations.’

‘As part of your storyboard, it’s critically important to understand the forces that compel change to a new solution, including the ‘push’ of the unsatisfied job itself and the ‘pull’ of the new solution.’

‘If the forces opposing change are strong, you can often innovate the experiences you provide in a way that mitigate them, for example by creating experiences that minimize the anxiety of moving to something new.’

‘After you’ve fully understood a customer’s job, the next step is to develop a solution that perfectly solves it. And because a job has a richness and complexity to it, your solution must, too. The specific details of the job, and the corresponding details of your solution, are critically important to ensure a successful innovation.’

‘Processes are invisible from a customer’s standpoint– but the results of those processes are not.’

‘When managers are focused on the customer’s Job to Be Done, they not only have a very clear compass heading for their innovation efforts but they also have a vital organizing principles for their internal structure.’

‘How you solve for a customer’s job will inevitably change over time; you need to build in flexibility to your processes, to allow them to continuously adapt and improve the experiences you deliver.’

Source:

Clayton M. Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon, and David S. Duncan (2016). Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice