Anthony W. Ulwick

Jobs-to-be-Done Theory provides a framework for

(i) categorizing, defining, capturing, and organizing all your customer’s needs, and (ii) tying customer- defined performance metrics (in the form of desired outcome statements) to the Job-to-be-Done.

Knowing all the customer’s needs in a given market dramatically changes the way a company approaches the innovation process. With a complete set of customer needs in hand, a company is able to discover hidden segments of opportunity, determine which needs are underserved and overserved, decide which strategies to pursue, simplify ideation, test concepts for their ability to get a job done in advance of their development, and align the actions of marketing, development, and R&D to systematically create customer value.

With knowledge of all the customer’s needs and which are unmet, a company can predict which new concepts and offerings will win in the marketplace. Evaluating a new concept against all the needs (when those needs are defined as the metrics customers use to measure value when getting a job done) will reveal how much better a proposed concept will get the job done.

Because customers are loyal to getting a job done, customers will switch to new solutions when they are able to get the job done significantly better. In our experience, new products that get the job done 20 percent better or more are very

likely to win in the marketplace. Knowing that a product will get the job done 20 percent or more is the key to predictable innovation. ODI makes this possible.

While applying Jobs-to-be-Done Theory over the past 25 years, I have developed the Jobs-to-be-Done Needs Framework (see the figure on the next page).

This framework introduces the types of customer needs that must be considered to gain a deep understanding of what a customer is trying to accomplish. They include (i) the core functional Job-to-be-Done, (ii) the desired outcomes tied to the core functional Job-to-be-Done, (iii) related jobs, (iv) emotional and social jobs, (v) consumption chain jobs, and

(vi) the buyer’s financial desired outcomes.

While a job describes the overall task the customer is trying to execute, an outcome is a metric the customer uses to measure success and value while executing a job. For every functional and consumption chain job there exists a set of up to 50 or more desired outcome statements.

The Jobs-to-be-Done Needs Framework reveals the complexity involved in understanding all the needs in a market. It is not as if the customer has a handful of needs, or that there is just one customer. A diverse group of customers in a given market often collectively have well over 100 needs. In more complex markets such as health care and social media, customers may have 200 needs or more.