Capítulo 1
Transforming Customer Understanding into Innovation Gold
Ever wonder why some products succeed wildly while others flop despite massive investment? The secret lies not in asking customers what they want, but in understanding what they're trying to accomplish. In "Jobs to be Done," Stephen Wunker, Jessica Wattman, and David Farber reveal how this revolutionary approach transforms innovation from a creative free-for-all into a structured, repeatable process. The book builds on Harvard professor Clayton Christensen's groundbreaking "Jobs to be Done" theory, which has influenced companies from Apple to Airbnb. With product failure rates exceeding 50% and only 1 in 300 new products significantly impacting customer behavior, this methodology offers a lifeline for companies drowning in customer data without actionable insights. Uber exemplifies this approach perfectly-rather than simply creating a cheaper taxi, they addressed fundamental pain points like unpredictable waits and payment hassles while satisfying emotional needs for certainty and control. This practical guide has become required reading at innovation-focused companies and business schools worldwide, offering a systematic roadmap to breakthrough ideas that genuinely resonate with customers.
Capítulo 2
Understanding the Jobs Customers Need Done
When we think about markets, we often define them too narrowly by what people currently buy. This leads to limited questions like "How can we sell more books?" instead of understanding underlying customer needs. The Jobs framework encourages us to focus on what customers are truly trying to accomplish-both functionally and emotionally.
Snapchat exemplifies this approach perfectly. Rather than competing directly with Facebook on features, they focused on emotional jobs important to millennials: sharing authentic moments without pressure for perfection and creating a space separate from parents and employers. This insight allowed them to create something truly distinctive that addressed unmet needs.
Successful products satisfy both functional and emotional jobs. For functional jobs, companies must focus on real needs (not invented ones), design for specific customers and occasions (not theoretical averages), and prioritize jobs over features. Emotional jobs, though often neglected, provide crucial differentiation as markets commoditize.
Beats headphones illustrate this beautifully. Despite technical criticisms from audiophiles, they captured 40% market share by satisfying emotional jobs around status and self-expression that competitors missed. While other headphone manufacturers focused solely on sound quality, Beats recognized that for many customers, headphones were fashion accessories and status symbols as much as audio equipment.
Effective product design requires focusing on a handful of key jobs rather than trying to satisfy every possible need. The priority should be jobs that are both important and undersatisfied. First Ipswich Bank demonstrated this approach with their specialized mortgage for pre-1750 homes. They recognized that customers' real job wasn't completing a mortgage transaction but moving into a home-allowing renovation costs to be included addressed a specific unmet need that standard mortgages ignored.
Many companies innovate by looking backward at current offerings and behaviors rather than at what truly drives customer behavior. A Jobs approach changes the innovation landscape by connecting with customers' true motivations. While satisfying functional jobs is necessary, appealing to emotional needs can make products breakthrough successes.
Capítulo 3
The Critical Role of Context in Customer Choices
Have you ever wondered why people with seemingly identical needs make completely different purchasing decisions? The answer lies in job drivers-the contextual elements that explain why customers have different priorities even when they share similar jobs to be done.
These drivers fall into three categories: attitudes (social/personality-based), background (long-term factors), and circumstances (immediate situations). Consider Stan shopping for a car. Though his basic jobs like reliability and safety suggest a Toyota Camry, his attitudes (desire to display success), background (living in snowy New England on a hill), and circumstances (needing to transport lacrosse equipment) ultimately lead him to choose a Cadillac Escalade instead.
Understanding these drivers helps companies create meaningful customer segments that go beyond traditional demographics. Planet Fitness exemplifies this approach, designing its business around members' attitudes (avoiding judgment), circumstances (young, casual exercisers seeking affordability), and background (preferring accessible fitness equipment over specialized training facilities).
Traditional segmentation schemes often focus only on demographics or behaviors without understanding why customers act as they do. Jobs and job drivers create more powerful segments by explaining motivations. When an education provider wanted to assess opportunities in online degrees, they looked beyond simple demographics. By examining attitudes (family expectations), background (financial constraints), and circumstances (work schedules, promotion potential), they identified viable segments for their online program and designed flexible courses for previously underserved customers.
Job drivers aren't objectives themselves but contextual elements that make certain jobs more important for specific customers. They cause people to prioritize jobs differently, which explains why two people facing the same situation might make entirely different choices. By combining jobs with job drivers, organizations can create offerings that resonate deeply with specific customer segments rather than trying to please everyone with a one-size-fits-all approach.
Remember that understanding starts with job drivers, but we must begin with jobs to avoid getting lost in details. We care about drivers that lead to key jobs to be done, not irrelevant characteristics. This nuanced understanding of customer motivation provides the foundation for truly innovative products that address needs customers themselves might not fully recognize.
Capítulo 4
Navigating Current Approaches and Pain Points
Innovation's challenge isn't making "better" products but ensuring they're better for the right people in the right ways. This requires looking beyond the immediate purchaser to understand all stakeholders involved in a decision.
In the grocery industry, at least three stakeholder types have distinct requirements: the buyer, the food preparer, and the eater. Looking too narrowly at any one stakeholder would miss crucial insights. Creating a process map from the customer's perspective helps identify all stakeholders and understand how they influence job definition. These maps must be specific to particular occasions rather than average scenarios-a Tuesday work lunch differs greatly from a Sunday family meal.
When designing solutions, you must decide whether to complement or replace current approaches. Behavior change is difficult-even beneficial changes face resistance. Kellogg's Breakfast Mates failed because it required customers to reconsider breakfast fundamentals, leaving them uncertain about milk temperature. Similarly, girls' education initiatives in post-Taliban Afghanistan initially failed when foreign NGOs didn't adequately consider local norms. Success came only when organizations included men and boys in gender initiatives and invited community elders to take ownership, working with existing attitudes rather than against them.
Pain points are problems inhibiting job completion-things customers find inefficient, tedious, boring, or frustrating. While some are obvious, others require observation to uncover. A medical technology company discovered surgeons' true pain points by monitoring heart rates during procedures, revealing frustrations with repetitive tasks and obstructed views that surgeons had accepted as inevitable.
Every pain point creates innovation opportunities, but the challenge is ensuring you're solving real customer pain points, not personal dissatisfactions or artificial problems. Quantitative assessment helps validate identified pain points across larger populations and map them to specific customer segments.
A company implementing a new file management system discovered this the hard way. Despite objective improvements (increased storage, better search functions, easier sharing), employees resisted abandoning their familiar folder-based system. The designers could have developed an alternative maintaining familiar folder structures, but instead tried convincing employees their preferred approach was inferior. The lesson: objectively "better" products are meaningless if they don't solve pain points in ways aligning with established behaviors.
New solutions must account for multiple stakeholders with different expectations while solving pain points in ways compatible with ingrained behaviors. Consider which current approaches will be leveraged versus replaced, and remember that behavior change often occurs slowly. Look beyond obvious pain points to emotional or unrecognized ones, and prioritize when you can't solve all issues at once.
Capítulo 5
Defining Success on Customer Terms
How do customers determine if a product is successful? Beyond identifying jobs and pain points, companies need to understand specific success criteria-how quickly a device must be mastered, how it should look up information, and other detailed requirements that translate jobs into actionable parameters.
Companies often focus too much on business metrics like sales figures and market share rather than how customers will evaluate a new offering. Success comes from satisfying the right jobs and alleviating the right pain points in contexts that are particularly important. Big Heart Pet Brands exemplifies this approach-they studied cat owners' emotional relationships with their pets and identified the tension between dry food convenience and wet food appeal. Instead of forcing customers to choose, they created Meow Mix Tender Centers with a dry exterior and wet center, generating over $100 million in two years by addressing both functional and emotional needs.
As companies compete asymmetrically by winning along previously unconsidered dimensions, the definition of success changes. Tesla's Model S exemplifies this by excelling at both traditional car metrics and new electric vehicle criteria. It satisfies traditional jobs (transportation, safety) while addressing new ones (environmental concerns), breaking Consumer Reports' rating system with 103 points out of 100.
Success means understanding what customers want more of, less of, and where they seek balance. Slack demonstrates this approach by working with email rather than replacing it, focusing on making internal communication easier while retaining archiving abilities. By understanding where to cut and where to add, Slack reached a $3.8 billion valuation in just over two years.
A customer-centric approach allows companies to make strategic trade-offs that increase value. MSNBC succeeded by reducing spending on overpriced TV talent and investing in political commentary experts, recognizing that cable news viewers cared more about content than appearance. By 2012, MSNBC had the lowest production costs per viewer while finishing second in primetime viewership.
The Colgate Wisp similarly succeeded by narrowly targeting a specific job-cleaning your mouth when away from home-with success measured by food removal, mouth freshening, speed, and not having to spit. By delivering precisely on these criteria and little else, it created an entirely new growth source for Colgate.
When Stephen launched Africa's first mobile commerce platform for Celtel in 2002, he focused on clear success criteria for business customers like South African Breweries. Their finance staff needed the system to accomplish two jobs: speed deliveries and reduce fraud. Specific parameters included reducing money counting from seven times to no more than two, saving an hour per night in reconciliation, and eliminating driver fraud. These clear criteria enabled Celtel to invest appropriately in distributor education and finance staff training while postponing less essential features like interface aesthetics.
Success criteria bridge customer insights and product features, enabling ideas to become well-articulated concepts. The definition of success may evolve as competitors change customer expectations, and creating value often requires making strategic trade-offs-deliberately giving up features that matter to only a few customers to excel in dimensions critical to target segments.
Capítulo 6
Overcoming Barriers to Adoption and Use
When innovative products fail to gain traction, it's often not because they're ineffective but because they face powerful obstacles to adoption and use. Getting consumers interested in new products means fighting their established routines. Companies must lower obstacles to adoption-making products inexpensive to try and clearly communicating benefits-to win early adopters who can become reference customers.
Even superior products face resistance from customers comfortable with existing solutions. GenZe's approach to introducing electric scooters in the U.S. illustrates effective inertia-fighting: they researched urban commuters' pain points, designed scooters with cargo units for briefcases and groceries, emphasized environmental benefits, added safety features for beginners, and created a tech-heavy, visually appealing product that makes a statement.
Six major barriers prevent initial product purchases:
1. Lack of knowledge (customers don't realize they need better solutions, as with medical record systems)
2. Behavior change requirements (like Russia's Ozon struggling with e-readers in a cash-based economy)
3. Multiple decision makers with misaligned incentives (as with hospital technology systems)
4. High costs (either absolute or relative to alternatives)
5. High risk (as with patent litigation insurance that might actually attract lawsuits)
6. Unfamiliar categories (like IoT solutions that don't fit existing budget categories)
En-Gauge addressed the unfamiliar category problem by focusing narrowly on fire extinguisher monitoring rather than positioning themselves as a general IoT solution, making their product easier to understand and budget for.
Even after adoption, four obstacles can prevent continued product use:
1. Limited supporting infrastructure (like electric vehicles without charging stations)
2. Pain points created by the solution itself (with 13% of consumers returning electronic devices due to frustration)
3. Products that are cool but not better (like early mobile payment systems that were slower than credit cards)
4. Untargeted offerings (like the Segway, which found success only after focusing on specific use cases like police forces, tour guides, and warehouses rather than general consumers)
When working with a major retailer to build its e-commerce presence, we discovered Amazon was actually helping fight consumer inertia in the category. Amazon raised awareness that heavy products could be purchased online affordably, normalized routine online shopping in the category, and forced the retailer to optimize shipping costs. Rather than viewing Amazon solely as competition, our client decided to leverage the behaviors Amazon was introducing while competing through superior selection and local store pickup options that Amazon couldn't match.
The burden falls on organizations-not customers-to defeat excuses for maintaining the status quo. Long-term success requires eliminating barriers to continued use, not just getting customers to try your product initially.
Capítulo 7
Creating and Capturing Value
Value isn't constant-it must work for both customers and businesses simultaneously. For businesses, the key questions are market potential and sustainability of profits over time. For customers, value relates to whether a solution satisfies jobs or alleviates pain points enough to warrant purchase.
When Stephen worked as a door-to-door meat salesman for a sous vide food company, they initially priced products on a cost-plus basis rather than customer value. The breakthrough came when a deli owner revealed the real value proposition: the ability to serve fish without smell or freshness issues, creating a unique market differentiation. Understanding the true sources of value enabled entirely new positioning strategies.
When pitching new ideas, quantifying market opportunity is crucial. Jobs-based insights help estimate market size by understanding customer priorities, pain points, and job drivers. Beyond measuring existing markets, Jobs-based thinking can expand market potential-as Hershey demonstrated when it discovered adults consume 55% of all candy. By designing confections addressing adults' emotional needs, Hershey reclaimed market leadership from Mars and expanded the overall candy market through innovations like Brookside's fruit-infused dark chocolate.
While established markets often dictate pricing through competitor-based strategies, less established markets require different approaches. Cost-plus pricing (marking up production costs) is common but arbitrary. Value-based pricing-setting prices based on how well products satisfy jobs to be done-allows strategic pricing that reinforces brand positioning.
Uber exemplifies this approach with its range of service levels (UberPOOL to UberLUX) and surge pricing that responds to increased demand when certain jobs become more important, like preserving expensive shoes in bad weather. This reinforces Uber's position as an on-demand service catering to individual needs rather than just a taxi alternative.
Creating customer value works only when it also creates business value. Boston's Tasting Counter restaurant demonstrates how Jobs-based thinking can optimize business models-by having customers purchase tickets in advance for set menus featuring local ingredients, the restaurant satisfies customer jobs (experiencing variety, supporting local businesses, enjoying meals without financial concerns) while simultaneously reducing food costs, eliminating waste, optimizing staffing, and earning interest on prepaid meals.
With declining birth rates and longer lifespans in developed countries, senior care products represent one of the fastest-growing markets. Kimberly-Clark's Global Innovation Center in South Korea studied this opportunity, identifying functional and emotional jobs seniors need fulfilled: feeling secure when traveling alone, staying active, leaving a legacy, and maintaining happiness after children leave home. This led to the Golden Friends brand in Korea, initially offering disposable undergarments but expanding to comfortable shoes and walking aids based on customer loyalty and identified jobs.
Framing markets in terms of jobs rather than products helps accurately size market potential and can expand it by revealing overlooked customer types. Rather than using basic cost-plus pricing, companies should adopt value-based pricing strategies that account for unique or emotional jobs their products satisfy. The ultimate goal is creating a business model that sustainably captures value while offering customers differentiated solutions that address their core needs.
Capítulo 8
Rethinking Competition Through a Jobs Lens
Competition extends far beyond traditional industry boundaries when viewed through a Jobs lens. As Peter Drucker noted in 1964, customers don't buy products-they buy satisfaction. All goods and services that provide similar satisfaction compete, regardless of their apparent differences. Oreo demonstrated this understanding when its marketing team realized the brand competes not just with other snacks but with mobile apps for attention during checkout line waiting time.
Companies often miss opportunities by failing to challenge established industry views. A consumer goods company criticized Trader Joe's store layout as inefficient and rule-breaking, yet couldn't deny Trader Joe's growing popularity was cutting into their sales. Similarly, Decor Aid disrupted the interior design industry by using Jobs principles to serve previously ignored customers-those who couldn't afford traditional high-end design services. By partnering with modern furniture dealers and creating cost-cutting technology, they undercut traditional firms and attracted DIY customers, even addressing unmet jobs like refreshing a single room or preparing for an event.
Through a Jobs lens, competitors are any offerings that satisfy the same jobs, with the competitive field changing across contexts. Nike understands this-while their sneakers compete with New Balance for functional foot support jobs, they also compete with watches or hairstyles when the job is projecting status or expressing individualism. This insight led Nike to create NIKEiD, allowing customers to design custom shoes that "express your identity." Businesses taking this broader competitive view not only differentiate within their market but expand it by capturing spending from other industries.
Organizations claiming to be first or only in their space typically fall into three groups. The first defines their business so narrowly they create an illusion of uniqueness while ignoring real competitors-like Digital Equipment Corporation focusing on "$6,000-$10,000 workstations" while customers shifted to PCs. The second group does something unique in their market but fails to recognize the concept exists elsewhere-like micro apartments seeming new in the US despite being common in China and Japan. The third group pursues genuinely new ideas, often enabled by emerging technology.
Brand marketing expert Darren Coleman shared how a prestigious UK racquets club used Jobs thinking to grow their business. Through qualitative research with existing members, they discovered that "playing tennis or squash" ranked lower than expected among members' jobs. Instead, members joined primarily to stay fit and enhance wellbeing, or surprisingly, to meet people-whether for business networking or friendship. Armed with this insight, the club refocused on delivering experiences specifically designed to satisfy these social and wellness jobs rather than just providing sports facilities. These efforts helped the club attract new members, upsell memberships, and even bring in premium-brand partners wanting exposure to their high-net-worth membership base.
Organizations must recognize they're not simply selling products or services but ways to get jobs done. Taking a Jobs-based perspective increases the ways you can satisfy customers while differentiating from competitors. Traditional views of competition that only examine direct competitors limit long-term prospects. A Jobs lens creates a broader competitive view, illuminating growth avenues and potential disruptors while keeping your brand fresh.
Capítulo 9
Implementing Jobs-Based Innovation Successfully
Innovation isn't about capturing lightning in a bottle but developing a competency deployed repeatedly to create breakthrough results. The Jobs Roadmap process helps address common innovation challenges by systematically turning customer insights into breakthrough innovations.
While digital health wearables were generating buzz years ago, companies struggled to find profitable approaches. BodyMedia took a muddled approach trying to please everyone and eventually was acquired mainly for its patents. In contrast, Fitbit created a clear strategy focusing on casual exercisers looking to be more active. By keying in on one overarching job-using everyday activities to improve overall health-Fitbit offered just enough solution to track activity, set goals, and integrate with diet plans. This targeted strategy helped Fitbit sell approximately 30 million devices and achieve an $8 billion market capitalization.
All organizations need a strategy beyond typical high-level mission statements. A winning strategy requires making five discrete choices that form a concrete action plan: defining what winning means, deciding how and with whom you'll win, determining competitive advantages, identifying specific challenges to overcome, and developing growth options and capabilities.
Marvel Comics exemplifies this approach-transforming from Atlas Comics by expanding its core assets into new products, reaching new customers, and experimenting with new business models like Netflix partnerships and digital subscriptions.
Despite widespread belief that Big Data solves all business problems, data alone lacks crucial context about customer decision-making. While data shows what customers buy and their satisfaction levels, it doesn't reveal why they choose products, how they use them after purchase, or their emotional connections to products. Major consumer goods companies like P&G and Microsoft (reportedly the second-largest employer of anthropologists worldwide) understand these limitations.
Traditional brainstorming often fails because of poor structure and facilitation. Boss-led sessions typically produce safe, unoriginal ideas as team members avoid proposing anything that might seem too radical. Effective brainstorming requires clear parameters about scope and implementation feasibility and should follow structured steps: aligning on purpose and boundaries, allowing individual reflection time, forming diverse small teams to expand ideas, grouping similar concepts to identify themes, building out promising ideas, and establishing clear next steps.
James Dyson revolutionized vacuum cleaners not by studying vacuum history but by looking outside the industry. Inspired by industrial sawmill cyclonic separators, he created the first bagless vacuum. Organizations that consistently innovate don't wait for serendipity-they institutionalize bringing outside perspectives into their innovation process.
Companies increasingly encourage smart risk-taking through experimentation, as demonstrated by PepsiCo's bold 2014 decision to shift nearly 100% of Ruffles' advertising budget to digital channels. Effective experiments don't need to be costly or complex-they're about timing (testing the biggest risks early) and reliability (ensuring you're testing what you think you're testing).
For sustained innovation success, Jobs to be Done principles must be embedded throughout an organization. Cognizant, a rapidly growing B2B technology company with over 200,000 employees, built consistent customer-centric innovation practices by generating immediate value without disrupting daily work, securing senior leadership support, preventing enthusiasm drop-off through persistent learning teams, creating internal experts, and building organic momentum through a multi-level certification program.
The Jobs Roadmap provides a structured process to transform broad mandates into creative yet robust initiatives-exactly what organizations need to avoid missteps while effectively serving their customers.
