Description
Take a look at this resour for a little inspiration.
Use the Customer Centered Job Mapping table located in your On Innovation book on pages 46-47. Thinking about your client’s customers (this is the client you picked the first week of the term), how can you innovate at each stage of the customer job process? This may be difficult, so you will need to be creative. Note that some of your innovations may not fit within your client’s existing business model or concept. Perhaps your innovation would fit better as a new business. That’s okay. The point of the exercise is to think about products/services needs from the perspective of your client’s customers. If you are having difficulty thinking through this, please contact me.
This resource may also provide additional insight into completing the Customer-Centered Job Map, which is also commonly referred to as a Customer-Centered Innovation Map.
You can use this spreadsheet to complete the job map, or you can complete it a Word document if you follow the same general outline. Remember to include the following if you do not use the provided outline:
Your client name
The customer job you are innovating for
Each stage of the customer job…define the job and describe your innovation
Finally, in a separate document, briefly describe what you learned through completing this Customer-Centered Job Mapping exercise. How can customer-centered job mapping be used within the Design Thinking process?
Jobs-To-Be-Done Theory and Methodology
Seeing innovation through a new lens reveals a new way to create customer value
Original Source
Fundamentals of Jobs-To-Be-Done Theory
As Theodore Levitt said, “people do not want a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter
inch hole.” It is true. People buy products and services to get jobs done; and while
products come and go, the underlying job-to-be-done does not go away. This notion is
at the heart of jobs-to-be-done theory.
While most companies innovate by trying to improve their existing products (creating a
better quarter-inch drill), the innovation process is dramatically improved by instead
trying to find better ways to create a quarter-inch hole (to get the job done). The
implication of this thinking is profound: stop studying the product and instead study the
job that people are trying to get done. By making the job, rather than the product or the
customer, the unit of analysis, we’ve made it possible for companies to achieve
predictable growth.
Here’s how our jobs-to-be-done methodology works in practice. By focusing on the jobto-be-done, it becomes possible, for the first time, to know all the customer’s needs and
determine which are unmet. It turns out that when customers are executing a job, they
have a set of metrics in mind that define the successful execution of that job. These
metrics (or desired outcomes) can be captured as actionable customer need statements
that replace the customer inputs companies ordinarily capture and use to create new
products. We have discovered that customers typically use between 50 and 150 distinct
outcome statements to describe the successful execution of any job. These metrics are
uniquely structured statements that describe how customers measure value. They are
the perfect input into a process that is aimed at creating valued products and services.
The ramifications of jobs-to-be-done theory do not stop here.
What Jobs-To-Be-Done Theory Tells Us
Jobs-to-be-done theory tells us much more about customers, strategy, products and
how managers should think about business, growth and innovation. The theory tells
companies to heed the following bits of advice:
Define your markets around the job-to-be-done. While most companies tend to
define a market around a product, technology or a solution, when applying jobs-to-bedone theory, a market is defined as a job executor and the job that executor is trying to
get done. For example, “parents” (the job executor) trying to “pass life lessons to their
children” (the job to be done) is a market. Defining a market this way opens the door to
a different type of market analysis, as the goal becomes analyzing the job to discover
where parents struggle to get the job done, rather than analyzing the products they use
for that purpose.
Help customers get the entire job done. People do not want to have to cobble
together different products and services to achieve their goals. They want one product
that helps them get the entire job done. The key to success is understanding, from the
customer’s perspective, just what the entire job is and making that job the focal point of
value creation. Keurig and Nespresso products, for example, get more of the “prepare a
hot beverage” job done than competing solutions such as a coffee pot, or a tea bag.
Help customers get more jobs done. Products evolve over time to help people get
more jobs done. Jobs-to-be-done theory tells us that the more jobs a product can help a
customer get done, the more valuable that product is as a product platform in that
space. The swiss army knife, for example, helps customers get dozens of jobs done,
and the smartphone helps customers get thousands of jobs done.
Design a business around a job-to-be-done. Rather than designing a business
around a product that is certain to become obsolete, companies should design a
business around the job-to-be-done. This way the company will always be focused on
creating the solutions that will get the job done best. This will result in longevity, as the
company will be more likely to disrupt itself.
Target those who will pay the most to get the job done best. When a market is
highly underserved, the fastest way to profits is to first target the people who will pay the
most to get the job done the best. We use outcome-based market segmentation
methods to discover if such a segment exists in a given market. Nest, for example,
targeted underserved customers who were willing to pay 5 times more for a solution that
would get the job of “achieving personal comfort” done significantly better. This strategy
is in stark contrast to a low-end disruption strategy where companies target over-served
customers who want to pay less to get the job done worse.
Focus R&D and M&A efforts on getting a customer job done better. Companies
invest lots of cash in R&D and M&A efforts, but those investments rarely pay off. Why?
Because the investments often times are not made to help customers get a job done
better. Jobs-to-be-done theory tells us that this is the main reason such investments
should be made.
Let jobs-to-be-done theory guide your future. What products will win in the future?
The products that help customers get the job done better. Knowing where customers
struggle today to execute the job-to-be-done indicates what a product has to do in the
future to win in the marketplace. Jobs-to-be-done theory predicts what products will win
in the future.
These insights have resulted in a revolutionary innovation process, Outcome-Driven
Innovation. Using this process, companies are far more likely to launch products and
services that get their customer’s jobs done significantly better.
Test Your Innovation IQ
Holly Green, Contributor
Original Source
Everyone knows that innovation means coming up with the next great idea in your
industry, right? Actually, there’s a lot more to it than that. Test your ability to separate
innovation fact from fiction by answering the following questions true or false:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Innovation is the act of coming up with new and creative ideas.
Innovation is a random process.
Innovation is the exclusive realm of a few naturally talented people.
The biggest obstacle to innovation is a lack of organizational resources and
know-how.
5. The most important type of innovation involves bringing new products and
services to market.
6. Teaching employees to think creatively will guarantee innovation.
7. The most powerful way to trigger your brain is to simply ask it a question.
8. Most companies pursue incremental rather than disruptive innovation.
9. Most companies are not structured to innovate.
10. Listening to your customers is a great way to innovate.
Answers:
1. False. In business, innovation is the act of applying knowledge, new or old, to the
creation of new processes, products, and services that have value for at least one of
your stakeholder groups. The key word here is applying. Generating creative ideas is
certainly part of the process. But in order to produce true innovation, you have to
actually do something different that has value.
2. False. Innovation is a discipline that can (and should) be planned, measured, and
managed. If left to chance, it won’t happen.
3. False. Everyone has the power to innovate by letting their brain wander, explore,
connect, and see the world differently. The problem is that we’re all running so fast that
we fail to make time for the activities that allow our brains to see patterns and make
connections. Such as pausing and wondering….what if?
4. False. In most organizations, the biggest obstacle to innovation is what people
already know to be true about their customers, markets, and business. Whenever you’re
absolutely, positively sure you’re right, any chance at meaningful innovation goes out
the window.
5. False. It’s certainly important to bring new products and services to market. But the
most important form of innovation, and the #1 challenge for today’s business leaders
may really be reinventing the way we manage ourselves and our companies.
6. False. New ideas are a dime a dozen. The hard part is turning those ideas into new
products and services that customers value and are willing to pay for — a process that
requires knowledge about what your customers want and need, coupled with
implementation.
7. True. Ask a question and the brain responds instinctually to get closure. The key with
innovation is to ask questions that open people to possibilities, new ways of looking at
the same data, and new interpretations of the same old thing.
8. True. Most companies focus on using internally generated ideas to produce slightly
better products (incremental innovation). Then they strive to get those slightly better
products to market as quickly and as cost-effectively as possible. This approach is
quicker and cheaper than disruptive innovation. But it rarely generates the results that
lead to sustainable market leadership.
9. True. Most organizations are physically set up with accounting in one area, marketing
in another, and management off by itself. Employees rarely interact with other
departments unless they need something to get their jobs done. And leaders and
departments often withhold information, believing that it puts them in a position of
power. Innovation requires teamwork, communication and collaboration, not isolated
silos.
10. Trick question! The answer is “it depends.” Research shows that customers can be
a good source of ideas for improving existing products and services — if you’re looking
to achieve incremental innovation. However, by itself, customer research is not
sufficient for generating disruptive innovation because it only uncovers expressed, or
known, customer needs. Disruptive innovation solves problems that customers didn’t
even know they had or were unable to clearly articulate to themselves or their vendors.
It redefines the market at a very fundamental level or, in many cases, creates a new
market.
If you got 8 or more correct answers, give yourself a pat on the back. If you scored
between 4 and 7, I recommend some more research and work on these critical
leadership skills. If you scored less than 4, wake up and smell the burnt coffee! Get
some help.
If you’re not constantly looking to improve your products, services, systems, and
managerial processes, you will fall behind. And once you fall behind, it can be very
difficult and often impossible to catch up!
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