Want to reduce your innovation risk, increase success rates, and crush it! Here’s how.

Many people believe that it’s impossible to know if a new product will be successful until it is launched. Maybe that was true in another era when companies only knew how to assess the probability of success of a new product by analyzing the historical revenue of other similar existing products. But the Jobs-to-Be-Done (JTBD) innovation approach changed all that.

Now, JTBD gives companies the power a look into the future and determine what the demand will be for a product or service that doesn’t even exist yet. How is that possible?

It’s possible because people don’t want to buy a ¼” drill; they want a ¼” hole. The core insight of JTBD is that people buy products and services to get their jobs done:

• Doctors hire stethoscopes to listen to their patients’ heart and lungs
• People go to comedy clubs to have a good laugh
• Chief Financial Officers hire accountants to reduce their tax liability

Products and services come and go but the jobs people want to get done remain stable over time. By explaining why customers buy what they do, JTBD gives managers a predictive theory:

“If you can help your target customers get an important unsatisfied job done better than the competition, then they will value your new offering.”

This is like the doctor who can confidently put a cast on the arm of a patient once an x-ray reveals the broken arm. The physician has a high level of confidence that this treatment will work because they understand what the patient is trying to accomplish, the cause of the problem, and how to resolve it.

JTBD is like an “x-ray” of the target customers’ condition. It delivers a more thorough and accurate diagnosis of the customers’ condition (their needs) than was previously possible. It reveals:

• The jobs your target customers are trying to accomplish (functional, emotional, and social)
• How they measure success getting the core functional job(s) done
• Where the important unsatisfied needs lie (these are opportunities for innovation and growth)

…with statistical validity.

Because JTBD reveals causality – that is, why people buy products and services – JTBD is more predictive of success than “predictive analytics” which still works in the realm of correlation.

Innovation will always have some solution risk – i.e., the risk that you cannot make what customers want.

But JTBD minimizes the biggest risk – market risk – i.e., the risk that customers won’t want what you make. You can significantly reduce your risk and dramatically increase your likelihood of success at the same time.