Most people think that innovation is inherently risky and messy. That’s not an unreasonable conclusion given an estimated 70-90% of new products fail. And yet, study after study has shown that the number-one cause of new product and service failure is misunderstanding customer needs¹. That’s a fixable problem. Maybe the way that most organizations are going about trying to understand their target customers’ needs is inherently risky and messy, not innovation itself?

Indeed, I have found that, by figuring out what matters most to target customers and where their unmet needs are—before generating ideas— organizations can flip the script, change the game, and achieve dramatically better results using the jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) innovation approach.

More and more organizations are doing exactly that by incorporating JTBD at the front end of their innovation processes. Employing JTBD first can greatly enhance the effectiveness of other popular innovation processes, including Design Thinking, Lean, Agile, and Stage-Gate by identifying and ranking the biggest opportunities in the target market before ideation. But you have to know what type of customer information to obtain, how to get it, and how to use it.

In “jobs theory,” customer needs are defined as the jobs they want to get done—functionally, emotionally, and socially—and the criteria they use to measure success. This is based on the insight that people “hire” products and services to get their jobs done. Capturing these types of customer needs enables organizations to discover why people buy, which makes it highly predictive. That is, if you know you can help your target customers get an important unsatisfied job done better than their current options, then you can be confident that they will value your new offering. Here are four ways that JTBD is uniquely effective at capturing breakthrough opportunities for growth.

First, focus only what matters most to your target customers. Most organizations don’t lack creativity or ideas; they lack focus. They lack clarity about where the market is under served and where the best opportunities lie. Knowing where your target customers’ important unsatisfied needs lie takes the guesswork out of innovation. It prevents you from wasting time and resources pursuing needs that are not important, already well-satisfied, or phantom needs that don’t really exist for customers. This minimizes the dangerous disconnect between what people want and what we think they want. Only important unsatisfied needs are worthy of pursuit and they’re easy to find when you know what to look for.

Second, consider only market opportunities that are attractive to pursue. With a ranked list of the biggest opportunities in the market, now you can evaluate each one according to how attractive it is to pursue based on your own criteria, such as your strategy, estimated time to market, etc. Great growth strategies are formulated by addressing big market opportunities while leveraging your organizational strengths. This enables firms to start engineering product/market fit before generating product or service solution ideas.

Third, gain strategic perspective. Getting clear about the big opportunities in the market and which ones are most attractive to pursue gives leaders a strategic perspective that reveals new possibilities and enhances creativity. Because JTBD captures need statements in a language format that is solution-free (i.e., there is no mention of any product or service solutions), you won’t be constrained by current offerings or even the assumption that a new product or service is the best way to address an opportunity.

Every customer job that is both important and unsatisfied is a potential new market opportunity. While some of the opportunities in your market may best be addressed by building new or improved offering on your current value delivery platform, other market opportunities may best be addressed through a merger or an acquisition, a partnership, operational innovation, or simply better messaging and positioning. Gaining this strategic perspective enables leaders to answer key strategy questions like:

1. Where will we play?
2. How will we win?
3. What capabilities must be in place?

By obtaining a comprehensive set of the jobs your target customers are trying to get done, you can enter into new markets with totally different strategies, each that align your company’s unique strengths with the competitive situation in the market.

This is how one regional accounting firm has grown. After identifying their target customers’ important unsatisfied jobs to be done and thinking through which were attractive to pursue and how to address them, they concluded that they were well-equipped to build two service lines  to address a couple of the market opportunities, but acquired a cyber security firm, entered into a joint venture with a temp accounting firm, and forged a partnership with an employee benefits firm to address other market opportunities. Had the partners not known which of their target customers’ jobs were important and unsatisfied, and considered the best platform to address each, it’s doubtful that the firm could have known where to focus or what to do to drive growth so effectively.

Fourth, align the board and executive leadership team around the best opportunities. Leaders are often risk-adverse because they are being asked to make big bets on solutions before the market need has been validated. By pre-validating market opportunities and explaining why an opportunity is attractive to pursue, JTBD speaks the language of business and design. Having this information helps align the board and executive leadership team across business functions and gives everyone confidence about where to focus and what to do.

People don’t want to buy your product or service; they want to get their jobs done. Products, services, and technologies come and go, but the jobs that your target customers want to get done are remarkably stable over time. By focusing on what target customers want to get done, JTBD can provide leaders with a North Star to help them navigate through tumultuous times to a prosperous future.

Footnotes:
1:  Robert G. Cooper, Co-founder of the Stage-Gate Idea-to-Launch Process, who has done some of the most extensive research on my new products failed, has confirmed this in a number of studies. Most recently, he wrote:

“A thorough understanding of customers’ needs and wants, the competitive situation, and the nature of the market, is an essential component of new product success. This tenet is supported by virtually every study of product success factors…Sadly, a strong market orientation is missing in the majority of firms’ new product projects. Successful firms spend about twice as much time and money as unsuccessful firms on these vital front-end activities…Research shows that homework pays for itself in improved success rates and actually reduces development times.”

Reveal needs. Create value. Drive growth.