How To Transform Ordinary Teams Into Breakthrough Innovators
“There’s no such thing as a creative or uncreative person or team; only people who are trained in creativity or untrained.” (Inspired by Jim Kwik’s insight on memory training)
The reason many product teams struggle to generate “good” ideas isn’t because they lack creativity – it’s because they lack focus. Without knowing where the market remains underserved, teams waste resources on unfocused ideation rather than targeted innovation.
Every market-winning idea contains two critical elements:
1) A precise definition of the target customers’ unmet need(s)
2) An insight about how to address that unmet need(s) more effectively than current solutions can
Jobs-to-Be-Done (JTBD) naturally decouples customer needs from product/service solutions because it’s based on the insight that people “hire” products and services to get their “jobs” done (a “job” is a problem to solve or an objective to achieve), like “make a hole.” Notice that this job statement – “make a hole” – doesn’t mention any product or service. That means companies won’t be constrained by current products and services, and are more likely to generate breakthrough innovation.
By decoupling needs from solutions, JTBD enables teams to do what was never possible before:
1) Obtain a comprehensive set of the target customers’ needs in virtually any market
2) Prioritize the needs according to how “unmet” they are. (An “unmet” need is both important to get done and not getting done to the target customers’ satisfaction. The more important and less satisfied a need is, the greater the opportunity for innovation it presents).
This clarity enables management and product teams to evaluate each opportunity for its attractiveness given the firm’s unique strengths and respond in whatever way makes sense well beyond just new or improved products, such as by crafting new and improved messaging and positioning, aligning operations with customers’ objectives, and/or through mergers, acquisitions, or partnerships.
Further, when customer need statements are captured and documented in the JTBD word format pioneered by Strategyn, they provide clear instructions about where to focus and what to do to create unique value.
For example, one client – a non-profit devoted to eliminating death, injury, property, and economic loss due to fire, electrical, and related hazards – fulfills its mission by establishing and distributing codes and standards for new buildings.
Their target customers are the architects and engineers who design life, fire, and safety systems to code, the contractors who install systems to code, and the municipal inspectors who inspect and enforce the codes and standards. We interviewed a diverse group of customers from all three target customer groups to find the opportunities for innovation (new value creation).
For example, when we talked with architects and engineers to uncover the steps they go through when “designing a system to code” and their criteria for success at each step, when we found that they want to:
1) Minimize the likelihood that a code can be interpreted differently by different people
2) Minimize the likelihood of interpreting a code incorrectly
3) Minimize the time it takes to determine how the local inspector interprets a code
Do you see how having this level of precision and clarity about where to focus and what to do – validated by customers and ranked with statistical validity according to how unmet they are – can empower your team to be more creative? And enable them to consistently generate winning ideas?
