Literary Insights

The book is about innovation and making progress, not just creating products.
Many companies are frustrated with innovation - they invest a lot but get mediocre results.
The problem is companies don’t understand why consumers make the choices they do.
Data about demographics and attributes doesn’t explain causality - why someone buys a product.
The key question to ask is: What “job” was the customer hiring the product to do?
When a job arises, we “hire” a product to solve it. If it does the job well, we hire it again.
This “jobs” theory has been refined over 20 years through academic research and real business examples.
Understanding the job to be done is key to predictable, profitable innovation.
The book will explain how to apply the “jobs” theory to make progress and successfully innovate.

Here are the key takeaways from Chapter 1:

Innovation is difficult to predict and sustain because companies have not been asking the right questions about what jobs customers are hiring products and services to do.
The theory of disruptive innovation provides a useful model for understanding competitive responses, but it does not explain customer behavior and why people pull innovations into their lives.
To understand customer motivation, we need to ask “What job did you hire that product to do?” This question gets at the underlying driver of customer choices.
The “jobs-to-be-done” theory proposes that people buy products and services to get a “job” done, not for the products themselves. Understanding the job provides insight into customer needs.
Knowing the job helps companies create innovations that solve important problems in customers’ lives. It provides a causal mechanism for successful innovation versus relying on trial and error.
The jobs theory was developed based on studying innovations that disrupted markets, where customer jobs were not being satisfied by incumbent products.
Focusing innovation on understanding customer jobs also applies to sustaining innovations and incremental improvements to existing products.
Understanding the jobs provides guidance on which product attributes are actually important versus those that are irrelevant to the job’s successful execution. This focuses innovation resources.
The milkshake example demonstrates how learning the job customers want to get done provides critical insight that data alone does not capture.
The author was puzzled by why successful companies often struggle to sustain success over time. He initially assumed it was due to management becoming complacent or incompetent.
However, his research found that even competent managers often fail when faced with disruptive innovations - cheaper, inferior products that transform a market.
The theory of disruptive innovation explains why industry leaders often fail in the face of disruption. But it does not explain how to successfully innovate or create new markets.
The theory of Jobs to Be Done provides a framework for successful innovation by focusing on the jobs customers are trying to get done rather than demographics or product features.
The milkshake example illustrates this - customers were “hiring” milkshakes to do the job of providing a satisfying morning commute, not because they wanted the specific product. This job focus allowed successful innovation.
The key takeaway is that focusing on the jobs customers need done, rather than demographics or product features, provides a roadmap for successful innovation. Jobs to Be Done theory explains how to create products people will want.
Clayton Christensen realized that to truly understand customer needs, you have to look at the specific “job” the customer is trying to get done when they use a product. This is more insightful than just trying to make your product objectively “better”.
He gives the example of a fast food milkshake. It serves two very different “jobs” for customers - a boring morning commute drink and an afternoon treat for kids. Those jobs have different needs, so you’d design very different milkshakes for each.
He tried applying this “Jobs to Be Done” thinking to help Unilever understand the margarine market. He realized margarine competes with many more products than just butter, depending on the job the customer wants done. Unilever executives didn’t seem receptive to this perspective.
The key insight is to understand what specific “job” your customer is hiring your product to do. Then you can design for that job, rather than just trying to make your product better in some generic way. This opens up innovation opportunities.
The Theory of Disruption provides valuable insight into how companies respond to competitive threats from innovations, but does not provide guidance on how to innovate successfully and consistently grow a business.
This book introduces the Theory of Jobs to Be Done, which explains why customers pull certain products/services into their lives - to resolve highly important but unsatisfied “jobs” that arise. This explains why some innovations succeed while others fail.
Jobs Theory provides a framework to guide innovation and understand competition in a way that enables differentiation. Identifying important unsatisfied jobs is key.
Jobs Theory goes beyond identifying jobs - it provides a blueprint for developing products/services with the right set of experiences to solve those jobs.
Integrating capabilities and processes across the company is critical to consistently nail the job and gain competitive advantage. Experiences integrated into company processes are hard to copy.
Many factors across the company, from insight to delivery, influence whether an innovation successfully solves a job. There are many ways to stumble even if the job is crystal clear.
Jobs Theory provides a new lens to look beyond current assumptions and standard practices to create innovations that solve important unsatisfied jobs in a new way. This is how disruptive innovations are born.
Louis Pasteur’s germ theory was revolutionary because it identified the underlying causal mechanism of disease transmission (germs), rather than just correlating diseases with things like bad air. This allowed the development of preventive measures like vaccines.
Similarly, Japanese auto manufacturers focused on understanding the root causes of manufacturing defects through theory and experimentation. By improving their processes, they could make reliable, high-quality cars efficiently.
In contrast, American manufacturers didn’t understand the causes of “lemons” and just tried to inspect and fix problems after they occurred. This was ineffective and costly.
The lesson is that to solve problems effectively, you need to uncover the underlying causal mechanism, not just observe correlations. This allows you to proactively address root causes.
For innovation, this means understanding the causal mechanism of consumer progress - the “job to be done” - rather than just focusing on product features or customer demographics. This elevates innovation from hit-or-miss to predictable.
The “Job to be Done” theory states that customers don’t buy products or services, they “pull them into their lives” to make progress and get a “job” done.
Jobs have functional, social, and emotional dimensions. Focusing solely on functional needs often overlooks the more powerful social and emotional needs.
Jobs arise within a specific circumstance. The circumstance is crucial to defining the job and finding an effective solution.
Jobs involve making progress toward a goal or aspiration. They are ongoing processes rather than discrete events.
The theory provides a framework for asking the right questions to understand what causes customers to choose a particular product or service.
In contrast, simply focusing on needs, trends, or customer demographics is too vague to predict behavior. Jobs take into account the complexity of consumers’ circumstances and needs.
The theory aims to move innovation past trial-and-error toward a more scientific process of understanding the true causes of customer behavior.
Jobs to Be Done are not just functional needs, but have social and emotional dimensions as well. The relative priority of different needs depends on the circumstances.
Identifying Jobs to Be Done requires looking at the full context and complexity of a customer’s struggle, not just fragmenting data into demographic segments. It is about understanding the “why” behind behaviors.
Jobs can be tricky to grasp fully. A useful technique is to imagine filming a documentary about a customer struggling to make progress in a specific circumstance, capturing the functional, social, and emotional elements.
Recent examples like Airbnb show how creating solutions for underserved Jobs to Be Done can lead to disruptive innovations, even if the solution seems inferior by traditional measures. Airbnb competes with staying with friends or not traveling, not just hotels.
Jobs should not be reduced to simplistic terms. A well-defined Job has multiple complex layers. Satisfying a Job requires engineering experiences across many dimensions, not just creating a product.

In summary, Jobs to Be Done are complex, contextual customer struggles that require a deeper understanding beyond demographics or product attributes. Identifying them fully enables the creation of innovative solutions.

Jobs Theory focuses on the underlying “job” that consumers are trying to get done, rather than just the product itself. The job is enduring while solutions for it can change over time.
Understanding the Job to Be Done allows innovators to see the true competitive landscape, which is often much broader than simply direct product competitors.
Jobs Theory shifts the perspective from a supply-side view (“selling products”) to a demand-side view (“responding to consumer jobs”). This opens up new innovation opportunities.
Examples are given of how BMW and other automakers came to see themselves as “mobility companies” rather than just selling cars, as they realized they were competing against alternative mobility solutions like Uber and self-driving cars.
Jobs Theory has limits and needs to be refined over time to understand where it does and doesn’t apply. But it can shift perspective to reveal new competitive landscapes and innovation opportunities.

Here are the key points about Jobs Theory in practice:

Jobs Theory has been successfully applied across diverse industries and organizations to drive breakthrough innovation and growth. Examples include Intuit, Nestlé, ADP, Autodesk, and medical device companies.
It transforms how you define your business, market, and competitors by revealing unseen jobs that customers are trying to get done. This creates new opportunities for innovation and growth.
Intuit used Jobs Theory to expand its market from accounting software to helping small businesses with multiple jobs, leading to new product offerings.
Nestlé applied it in the coffee market to create the wildly successful Nespresso system, based on understanding the job of a good cup of coffee for time-pressed professionals.
For ADP, it shifted the perspective from payroll processing to helping companies manage human resources, sparking many new products.
In healthcare, seeing jobs from the patient’s perspective has led to many innovative medical devices and approaches to improve health outcomes.
Jobs Theory provides a common language and framework across an organization to guide innovation efforts and align teams. It focuses ideas and energy on the jobs that matter most.

In summary, Jobs Theory is a proven, versatile approach that has opened up new innovation opportunities and fueled growth for organizations in diverse industries by revealing a deeper perspective on customer needs. It is not just an abstract idea, but a practical theory with demonstrated results.

In 2003, Paul LeBlanc became president of Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU), a small college facing financial struggles.
Around this time, LeBlanc attended a Harvard working group on innovation, where he learned about the “jobs to be done” theory.
LeBlanc realized SNHU was treating all students the same, when there were really two key student segments with very different “jobs” for the university:

Traditional high school grads wanting a coming-of-age experience
Older, nontraditional students needing convenient and fast credentials to advance their careers

For the first segment, SNHU competed with other local colleges. But for the second, it competed against national online programs and non-consumption. This was a huge opportunity.
However, SNHU’s policies and processes were not designed for these older students and their circumstances. For example, the financial aid process was too slow.
By tailoring offerings and messaging to each segment’s “job”, SNHU saw huge enrollment and revenue growth in its online program.
The key insight was recognizing the different “jobs” and competing against non-consumption unlocked new growth.
Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) struggled to grow its online education programs using traditional marketing approaches.
The leadership team started asking “Jobs to Be Done” questions to understand what online learners were hiring SNHU to do.
They realized online learners had very different needs and goals than traditional on-campus students. Online learners needed credentials and skills as efficiently as possible to advance their careers.
SNHU transformed its admissions process to remove obstacles and delays for online learners. They provided quick responses, resolved financial aid and transfer credits fast, and focused messaging on fulfilling online learners’ jobs.
SNHU set up personal advisors for each new online student to help them progress and complete their goals.
As a result, SNHU’s online enrollment and revenues grew exponentially. The Jobs to Be Done approach gave them the mindset and language to reinvent processes to better serve online learners’ jobs.
The book authors argue the Jobs Theory has been transformational across many industries, uncovering why consumers make choices and enabling organizations to create better solutions.
Nielsen found that very few new product launches become big hits, but the ones that do succeed have one thing in common - they nail an unmet “Job to Be Done” that customers have.
FranklinCovey struggled with growth until the CEO realized their training products weren’t focused on the actual “Job to Be Done” their B2B customers had. The job was not just training employees, but connecting that training to business outcomes so that HR/learning teams were seen as contributing to the company’s key goals.
FranklinCovey repositioned their offerings around specific jobs with measurable outcomes. This expanded their potential for growth beyond just competing for training budgets.
Intuit’s Scott Cook almost missed the opportunity for QuickBooks because he didn’t understand the “Job to Be Done” small businesses had in using Quicken - they just wanted confidence their finances were in order, not complex accounting software.
The power of a “Job to Be Done” approach is seeing beyond the product to the progress the customer seeks. This focuses innovation on delivering what matters most to customers.

Here are the key points from the section:

Bob Moesta was tasked with boosting sales of new homes and condos for a builder in Detroit during a difficult market. Despite appealing features, few prospective buyers were converting to sales.
Moesta took a different approach - rather than add more features, he interviewed people who had already bought to understand the “job” the condo was hired to do.
He found there wasn’t a clear demographic or set of features that explained who bought. Instead, there was a “job” that the condo helped buyers do.
The job was to help people move on to a new stage of life after a major life event like divorce or kids moving out. The condo helped them bridge their old life and new life.
Understanding this job let the builder make changes to target and assist people going through these life transitions. Sales improved as a result.
The key is uncovering the underlying “job” that makes people pull a product into their lives, not just adding more product features. Seeing innovating opportunities means looking for jobs, not just improving features.

Here are the key points summarizing the section on finding jobs close to home:

Understanding the unresolved jobs in your own life can provide fertile territory for innovation. If a problem or struggle matters to you, it likely matters to others as well.
Successful innovators like Sony’s Akio Morita and Khan Academy’s Sal Khan have created breakthrough products by intuiting jobs in their own lives or the lives of their family members.
Morita trusted his intuition about the Walkman rather than market research. Khan created math videos to help his cousin learn in a more enjoyable way. Both tapped into jobs they personally understood.
Other successful startups like Care.com have also come from founders identifying and solving a job in their own lives.
You don’t need to have dramatic personal epiphanies. Jobs in your daily life experiences and struggles can point to overlooked opportunities.
The key is being attuned to jobs around you and having the insight to recognize their broader applicability. Your own life experiences provide a valuable starting point if you know how to interpret them through a jobs lens.

Nonconsumption represents a major opportunity for innovation. Look not just at stealing share from competitors, but at people who currently hire no product at all to get a job done.
Kimberly-Clark innovated adult undergarments by understanding nonconsumers - people who would rather do nothing than buy an adult diaper. They redesigned the product to be more dignified and help people reclaim their lives.
Spotting workarounds and compensating behaviors reveals dissatisfied customers trying to solve a problem on their own. This signals an opportunity for an innovation that solves their Job to Be Done better.
Banks had made savings accounts undesirable for many, like parents wanting to teach kids about saving. ING Direct seized this opportunity by removing obstacles like fees and minimum balances.
OpenTable was born out of the common workaround of calling restaurants back and forth trying to book reservations that work for your party. It seized this opportunity by allowing online booking.

There are five fertile areas to look for new “Jobs to Be Done”: functional job, social job, emotional job, jobs people don’t want to do, and unusual uses of existing products.
It’s important to understand not just the functional dimension of a job, but also the social and emotional context. Products designed only for functional performance can miss meeting broader job needs.
An example is examining rooms designed efficiently for doctors, but overlooking patient anxiety. While software improves functionality, doctors choose pen and paper to maintain eye contact and connection.
Jobs Theory pushes innovators to dig deeper into the full complexity of a job. Just asking people what they need doesn’t capture the complete picture.
Observing people’s behaviors and struggles in context reveals important emotional and social dimensions that drive why they “hire” products and services. This fuller understanding reveals more innovation opportunities.
Jobs Theory provides a clear guide for successful innovation because it enables a full, comprehensive understanding of the information needed to create solutions that perfectly nail the job.
There are many techniques for developing insights into jobs, including traditional market research. What matters most is the questions you ask and how you piece together the resulting information.
Your own life experiences offer fertile ground for uncovering jobs. Some highly successful innovations have come from individuals’ introspection about unsatisfied jobs in their lives.
Studying nonconsumers - people not currently buying any products in your category - can provide important jobs insights, as their struggles likely differ from current customers’.
Pay close attention when you see people using workarounds or “compensating behaviors” to get a job done. It often signals a high-potential opportunity, as the job is so important they’re inventing their own solution.
Closely observe how customers use your products, especially in unexpected ways, to gain insights into the jobs.
It’s critical to uncover the emotional and social dimensions of jobs, not just functional. Addressing all three is key.
Questions for leaders: What unsatisfied jobs exist in your life? What do your company’s products reveal about the jobs customers hire them for? Who isn’t using your products, and what jobs challenges do they face?

Here are a few key insights from this section:

Customers often cannot accurately articulate what they want or need. Their stated desires may not match their actual behaviors.
Sales data only shows the “Big Hire” moment when a purchase is made. It doesn’t reveal whether the product actually meets the customer’s needs over time through repeated “Little Hire” moments.
When considering a new product, customers weigh the forces compelling change (their need and the appeal of the new solution) against opposing forces (comfort with the present and anxiety about choosing something new). Companies often focus only on making their product more appealing.
To truly understand what job a customer is trying to get done, companies need to dig deeper, watching how customers behave and piecing together clues from the functional, emotional, and social dimensions of their experiences. This reveals the circumstances of struggle and helps identify what needs to be fired for a new product to be hired.

Here are the key points I summarized:

People are reluctant to give up old solutions, even if frustrated with them, due to loss aversion and anxieties about the cost, effort, and uncertainties of adopting something new. The pull of the new must outweigh these hindering forces.
Emotional and social factors play a big role in consumer decision making, even in B2B contexts where you might expect pure rational calculus. For example, a plant manager worries about reliably getting needed supplies, or a project manager wants to look competent to peers.
Mercer developed its Pension Risk Exchange innovation by understanding corporate clients’ full jobs, including the anxieties HR/finance leaders faced in shifting pension plans. Features like modeling tools reduced anxiety and facilitated adoption.
Jobs Theory helps uncover the complete picture of the progress customers want to make and the complex competing needs and priorities involved, not just the appeal of the new solution. This full context matters greatly in understanding what will cause customers to change behavior.

Here is a summary of the key points from the excerpt:

Brian Walker bought a mattress at Costco about 45 days ago, on a Saturday. He did not originally intend to buy a mattress that day.
Walker went to Costco with his wife and two young children to buy regular supplies like milk, baby wipes, paper towels. The mattress purchase came towards the end of their 45-minute shopping trip, after their cart was already fairly full.
The interviewer is trying to build a detailed timeline of events leading up to the mattress purchase, even asking seemingly unimportant questions about specifics like how much milk was purchased.
The goal is to uncover the full context and circumstance behind the purchase, revealing that it was not really an “impulse buy” but rather the result of an ongoing struggle or “job” that the mattress would help Walker make progress on.
The interview style demonstrates how open-ended questions about timeline, details, and context can uncover the real backstory behind a purchase decision. The aim is to build a narrative revealing the complexity behind consumer choice.
Walker had purchased an expensive Stearns & Foster mattress 4 years ago but it started to sink and was causing back/neck pain, headaches, and restlessness. His wife also started having issues with it.
He tried flipping, rotating, and adjusting the mattress but nothing helped. The store said the sinkage wasn’t enough for a warranty claim.
Walker travels a lot for work and didn’t have these issues when sleeping in hotel beds, confirming it was their mattress causing problems.
He started researching new mattresses online 3 months ago but was wary of buying one sight unseen.
While at Costco finishing up a stressful shopping trip, he came across their memory foam mattresses. After testing a sample and getting wife’s approval, he decided to purchase one for $699.
Walker had been close to buying one through Groupon that was cheaper but didn’t want to risk having issues returning an online purchase. He wanted one from a local store like Costco.
The mattress stores gave him anxiety so he avoided going to them, instead researching mattresses online over the past few months.

Here is a summary of the key points from the interview:

The customer has severe anxiety about the mattress purchasing process, stemming from being a germaphobe and finding mattress stores with pushy salespeople anxiety-provoking.
He has thought about buying a new mattress for over a year but has been unable to bring himself to go through the normal purchase process.
He ended up impulsively buying a mattress at Costco without trying it first because his wife was with him, Costco allows easy returns, and his sleep deprivation as a husband and father was weighing on him.
The interview reveals deep emotional struggles around mattress purchasing decisions, suggesting opportunities for mattress retailers to improve the customer experience and reduce purchasing barriers.
It also reveals non-traditional mattress “competitors” like Advil and Red Bull that customers use as workarounds for poor sleep.
The key takeaway is that there are rich insights to be gained from deep, contextual understanding of customers’ circumstances and jobs-to-be-done.

Here are some key points about creating experiences that successfully do the job:

Focus on experiences, not just features. Successful products enable compelling experiences that perfectly fit the job.
Understand the real job your customer is hiring you for. For American Girl, it was about connecting mothers and daughters, not just selling dolls.
Think through every detail of the experience from the customer’s perspective. For American Girl, packaging and doll delivery was designed to create excitement.
Experiences should map closely to the nuances of the job. American Girl dolls represent diverse backgrounds that resonate with customers’ identities.
Deliver the experience in a way aligned to the job. American Girl stores provide an immersive environment suited to the bonding experience.
Creating the right experiences can inoculate you against disruption from competitors who don’t understand the job as deeply.

The key is to uncover the complex job and then design an end-to-end experience that fits it perfectly. This creates powerful resonance that competitors will struggle to replicate.

American Girl dolls became a hugely successful business by deeply understanding the emotional job of both mothers and daughters - to recreate the happy memories and experiences of childhood.
Founder Pleasant Rowland used American Girl’s core offerings to expand into diverse products like books, movies, restaurants etc, that aligned with pleasant childhood activities. This allowed the company to tap into multi-generational nostalgia.
Competitors have struggled to copy this formula because they don’t understand the emotional core of the job American Girl is being hired for. They see it as just a product rather than an experience.
Jobs have complexity and nuance that require deep understanding. A ‘job spec’ captures the details needed to design products that solve the job well. This includes functional, emotional and social dimensions.
Identifying the job is the first step. Creating desired experiences and integrating them into company processes is also critical. This end-to-end approach creates value competitors can’t copy.
IKEA succeeds by deeply understanding the job of furnishing a home quickly and affordably. All aspects of the shopping experience are designed to help overcome obstacles in getting this job done.
Customers will pay premium prices when a product nails the job, because it saves them time, frustration and wasted money on poor solutions. The ‘struggle’ is costly.
Products that help customers overcome obstacles to make progress become services they value, not just products with features.
Medtronic originally relied on traditional research methods to improve its pacemakers, focusing on doctor feedback. But pacemakers weren’t selling well in India.
Using Jobs to Be Done research, Medtronic identified 4 key obstacles preventing patients in India from getting pacemakers: lack of awareness, diagnostics, care navigation, and affordability.
Medtronic adjusted its approach to directly help patients overcome these obstacles through screening clinics, patient counselors, financing assistance, etc.
This transformed Medtronic from a product seller to a partner in enabling patients to get the care they needed. India became a high-growth market as a result.
In contrast, the car rental experience is filled with frustrating obstacles for customers trying to accomplish the job of getting transportation. Uber created a much improved experience by focusing on removing these obstacles.

Here are the key points from the passage:

Companies need to understand the “Job to Be Done” - the experiences and progress customers are seeking - when purchasing and using a product. This is a key factor in customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Uber has been successful because it delivers very well on the experiences people want when hiring a ride service - ease, reliability, lack of hassle. This has enabled it to disrupt the taxi and car service industries.
Amazon’s customer reviews are powerful because they let shoppers see if a product will get the job done that they need it for, building confidence to purchase unfamiliar items. Reviews help products get hired for the right jobs.
Negative reviews can break a business if customers hire a product for the wrong job and are disappointed. Companies now need to educate customers on what jobs their offerings are suited for.
A strong brand purpose helps avoid products being hired for the wrong reasons. Examples like Uber, TurboTax, Disney, and Harvard convey a clear job the brand fulfills.

In summary, focusing on the experiences customers seek, not just product features, and educating them on when to hire your offering, are key to satisfaction, loyalty and avoiding disruption. Purpose brands that embody a clear job to be done are powerful.

Purpose brands perfectly perform an important “job” for customers. They become synonymous with getting that job done, to the point where customers don’t even consider alternatives.
Purpose brands are built by consistently creating the right experiences to resolve customers’ jobs. This earns customer trust and loyalty over time.
Purpose brands integrate around jobs rather than established competition. This allows them to reconfigure industries, change the basis of competition, and command premium pricing.
Purpose brands provide clarity for customers and employees. For customers, it’s clear that this brand will get the job done. For employees, the brand’s purpose guides decisions and behavior.
Purpose brands like FedEx and Google were built with minimal advertising initially. They succeeded because they were optimized for a clear job.
Brands can lose purpose status if they stray from the core job, as happened with Volvo. To maintain purpose brand status, companies must stay focused on nailing the job.
Identifying the right job and building experiences to solve it is key to achieving purpose brand status and its competitive advantages.

Here are a few key points summarizing the section:

Organizations typically structure themselves around functions, business units, or geography. But successful growth companies optimize their organization around the job to be done.
Competitive advantage comes from an organization’s unique processes - the ways it integrates across functions to perform the customer’s job. Processes determine how resources are transformed into value.
Processes are often invisible but profoundly impact the customer experience. Absence of clear processes leads to chaotic, ad hoc experiences.
Toyota and Pixar freely shared details of their production processes with competitors, knowing that the processes themselves were hard to copy. Processes emerge from hundreds of small decisions reflecting company priorities and culture.
Southern New Hampshire University focused relentlessly on integrating processes to best serve online students and their jobs. Strong processes give managers flexibility in deploying resources.
The job, not efficiency or productivity, should be the focal point in designing processes. Integrating around the job confers competitive advantage.
Focusing processes around the customer’s Job to Be Done fundamentally changes how an organization operates and what it prioritizes. For example, Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) used to measure success in student recruitment by how many info packages were mailed out. By refocusing around the job of prospective students, SNHU now measures response time in minutes and has admissions reps actively help students through the process.
Aligning processes with the customer’s job shifts complexity and hassle away from the customer onto the company. SNHU now proactively handles tasks like retrieving transcripts instead of leaving it to the student.
Jobs Theory advocates designing organizational structure around delivering on the customer’s job rather than typical functional silos. For example, when launching the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, leaders organized divisions around consumer finance jobs to be done rather than typical regulatory functions.
Having clear customer jobs provides direction for innovation efforts and an organizing principle for company structure. Processes can then be designed to systematically deliver on that job.
Traditional reorganizations that shift roles, responsibilities, and reporting lines often fail to deliver results. Jobs Theory suggests the focus should be on how the organization interacts to deliver on customer jobs.

Here are a few key points from the summary:

Jobs Theory changes how you measure success - from internal financial metrics to external customer benefit metrics. Focus on solving the job the customer wants done.
Measuring job alignment is challenging but critical. Amazon obsessively tracks metrics related to delivering vast selection, low prices, and fast delivery because those solve core customer jobs.
Processes should be efficient but also flexible to changing job demands over time. Amazon uses “subroutines” - modular process building blocks that can be reused across the organization.
The key is to stay attached to the stable job, while being willing to change your processes and solutions as the job demands over time. Avoid changing the job concept to fit your existing process.
Hiring a product or service is like hiring an employee to get a job done. The example of hiring OnStar for peace of mind illustrates this.

In summary, Jobs Theory says processes should be optimized for efficiency and job alignment, using measurable customer benefit metrics and modular “subroutines” that flex as job demands change over time. The focus is on solving customers’ jobs, not perfecting internal processes.

The author got locked out of his car, but was able to use the OnStar service to get back in and retrieve his friend’s wallet that was inside. This made him appreciate the value of OnStar.
OnStar provides subscription-based communications, security, hands-free calling, navigation, and diagnostics for cars. It was created by General Motors and operates in the U.S. and Canada.
OnStar was initially conceived as a way to showcase cool new technologies at auto shows, not as a real product. But the CEO challenged them to create a profitable business model.
At first OnStar couldn’t understand how and why customers used the service. But having employees listen to real customer calls revealed they used it for safety and peace of mind when driving, not just as a concierge service.
Understanding the “job to be done” for customers led OnStar to improve its technology, processes, and customer service to align with providing security and assistance when driving.
Iterating and improving the technology rapidly was key, not following the typical long auto industry timelines. This allowed OnStar to stay competitive.
Focusing on the core job to be done allowed OnStar to become a highly successful service for GM, appealing to all customers seeking safety and security when driving.

Here are a few key points on ensuring that the customer’s job guides organizational decisions:

Appoint a “Chief Jobs Officer” or similar role to be responsible for advocating for the customer’s job at the leadership level. This person can ensure the job is considered in strategic decisions.
Make the job a central part of the company’s vision and strategy. Communicate regularly on how the job should guide decisions at all levels.
Train employees, especially product developers and customer-facing roles, on Jobs to be Done and how to gather insights about the customer’s job.
Set up processes to continually gather data and insights about the customer’s job through research, customer advisory boards, feedback channels, etc. Feed these insights back into development and marketing.
Define metrics and KPIs that directly measure how well you are solving the customer’s job, not just product usage or satisfaction. Track progress over time.
Set up cross-functional teams with clear accountability for delivering on different aspects of the job. Break down silos.
Involve customers directly in processes like concept testing, user research, beta programs to ensure solutions will nail the job.
Allow flexibility and experimentation in processes to continuously improve and adapt solutions to the job. The job is a moving target.
Make trade-offs in favor of what’s best for the job when there are competing priorities. Be willing to “fire” features or projects that don’t serve the job.
Celebrate wins that directly improve customers’ ability to make progress and get the job done, not just business wins. Build a culture focused on the job.

Here are a few key points summarizing the chapter:

Even successful companies can lose sight of the “job” their product or service was originally hired to do. They get distracted by growth, competition, and internal metrics.
There are three common “fallacies” that cause companies to drift from their core purpose:

The Fallacy of Active vs Passive Data - Companies focus more on active data like sales and metrics rather than passive listening to customers’ struggles.
The Fallacy of Surface Growth - Companies pursue shallow growth by tweaking products rather than reinforcing the core job.
The Fallacy of Conforming Data - Companies shape data to conform to their existing product portfolio rather than let the data guide strategy.

These fallacies cause successful companies like V8 to drift from their original purpose brand and try to compete on dimensions like product variety rather than fulfilling a core customer job.
To stay focused, companies need to keep listening to customers, reinforce their purpose brand, and let customer struggle data guide strategy - even if it means disrupting themselves. Focusing on the job provides clarity in a crowded market.

The key is to not lose sight of the core “job” the product was hired to do, even in the pressures of growth and competition. Straying too far from this purpose is like “déjà vu all over again.”

Two decades ago, Kmart was a major retailer, but it has declined dramatically while Walmart, Costco, and Target have thrived. Companies organized around a brick-and-mortar business model rather than a customer’s “Job to Be Done” are unlikely to succeed long-term.
By contrast, companies like OpenTable, Salesforce.com, Airbnb, craigslist, and IKEA have succeeded by focusing on a distinct Job to Be Done.
When a product is first launched, managers rely on “passive data” like customer frustrations and experiences to identify opportunities. But over time they shift to “active data” like sales figures and benchmarks which feel more concrete but can lead them to manage metrics rather than the actual job.
Companies often try to sell more products to existing customers (“surface growth”) instead of staying focused on the core job. This spreads them thin and makes them vulnerable to disruptors targeting a single job.
Data often gets manipulated to support desired conclusions (“conforming data”). Managers need to be vigilant against letting data tell the story they want to hear rather than reflect reality.
To avoid these pitfalls, managers should stay focused on customers’ struggle to get the core job done and design experiences around this job. This takes constant vigilance as data rises that can distract from the job.
Most companies start by identifying an important unsatisfied customer job and creating a solution for it. But as they grow, they often lose focus on the original core job and become more product-oriented.
There are three common “fallacies” that cause companies to drift away from understanding the customer’s job:

The Fallacy of Active Data vs Passive Data - Companies start to rely more on internal operational data rather than continuing to gather “passive” data that reveals the complexities of the customer’s job.
The Fallacy of Surface Over Structure - Companies focus on superficial data about customer demographics and attributes rather than underlying structural data about the job itself.

The Fallacy of Big Data Hubris - Companies put too much faith in “big data” analytics while underestimating the biases inherent in how the data was collected and analyzed.
All data has human bias and judgment embedded in it. There is no purely “objective” data.
To stay focused on the customer’s job, companies need “active management” of data - conscious choices about what data to gather and how to analyze it in relation to the job.

The key is to maintain a voice and champion for understanding the customer’s job amidst all the operational data that companies naturally generate as they grow.

Here are the key points about building a jobs-focused organization:

A well-articulated job provides a “commander’s intent” that guides employees’ work without the need for micromanagement. When people understand how their work helps customers get an important job done, they are intrinsically motivated.
Rather than chasing an endless list of feature requests, successful companies focus on the core job customers are hiring the product to do. Intuit realized customers didn’t want to go through TurboTax’s interview process - they wanted their taxes done automatically.
Jobs-focused leaders empower employees closest to the customer to make decisions based on the job. At Intuit, front-line employees can approve refunds up to a certain amount without manager approval if they feel it satisfies the customer’s job.
Metrics need to reflect how well the company is helping customers get the job done, not just internal processes. Intuit tracks customer success metrics like Net Promoter Score rather than productivity stats.
A clear, shared understanding of the job provides strategic alignment across the organization and over time. As leaders come and go, the job endures as a guiding force.
To build a jobs-focused culture, senior leaders need to communicate the importance of the job throughout the company. Employees should be able to articulate the core job customers hire the product to do.

The key is keeping the job at the center of all decisions, even when under pressure to chase short-term wins. This focus and alignment allows companies to innovate successfully over the long term.

Focusing on the “Job to Be Done” rather than improving existing products led TurboTax to realize they needed to completely eliminate the tax interview.
This realization energized innovation at the company as teams worked on how to automatically fill in tax returns without any data input. It aligned the entire organization.
Focusing on the job provides four benefits: empowering distributed decision-making, aligning resources, inspiring people and unifying culture, and measuring what matters.
Generic mission statements don’t provide much guidance for innovation and decision-making. A clear “job spec” does provide that focus.
Jobs Theory gives employees an intuitive playbook to make the right decisions. It serves as a focal point and “commander’s intent” so people know how to balance tradeoffs without specific directives.
The simplicity of the Jobs to Be Done concept makes it very effective at aligning organizations behind customers’ jobs.

The article discusses how focusing an organization around a clear “job to be done” can provide powerful clarity and alignment. When GM’s OnStar team realized customers were hiring their service for “peace of mind” while driving, it shifted the organization’s focus from flashy features to real customer benefits. This job clarity acted as a “two-sided compass” - guiding both what to build as well as motivating employees. It enabled quick, empowered decisions, like providing full services to customers affected by hurricanes. Jobs theory creates a culture where people understand the purpose and make the right choices. Measuring progress against the job rather than traditional metrics focuses efforts. The job provides a north star for the organization amidst complex, ever-changing conditions.

Key points:

A clear “job to be done” brings simplicity and focus to complex organizations
The job acts as a two-sided compass, guiding both product decisions and motivating employees
Jobs theory empowers people at all levels to make quick decisions aligned with purpose
Measuring against the job rather than traditional metrics focuses efforts
The job provides a consistent north star for navigating complexity and change
Intuit founder Scott Cook realized that while Intuit collected lots of data on customer clicks, it wasn’t measuring what really mattered - improving customers’ lives.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is laser focused on delivering on 3 core promises: vast selection, low prices, and fast delivery. Everything at Amazon aligns to efficiently deliver on these jobs customers hire them to do.
SNHU President Paul LeBlanc keeps one key metric front and center: would graduates choose SNHU again if given the chance? This measures if they got the job done.
After the Boston Marathon bombing, Deseret News CEO Clark Gilbert realized print newspapers were no longer the best solutions for breaking news.
Through jobs-based research, Gilbert found many news consumers wanted “thoughtful, non-polemical news and analysis from credible sources” that was informed by their values.
This segment of “like-minded believers” felt underserved by existing news options. Identifying and serving this job to be done allowed Deseret News to better meet customer needs.
The key insight is that identifying the jobs customers are trying to get done, rather than just building on existing offerings, allows companies to provide much better solutions.

Here are the key points from the passage:

Successful companies often start by unconsciously organizing around a core “Job to Be Done” for customers. But as they grow, processes and managerial layers distance them from that core job.
Organizations should pursue operational efficiency without compromising the customer’s Job to Be Done. The job should be the unifying principle.
A clear, inspiring statement of the core job provides four benefits:

Distributed decision-making aligned with the job
Resource optimization focused on the job
Inspiration for employees to enable customer progress
Measurement focused on customer-centric metrics tied to the job

Articulating and embedding the core job deeply into company culture is difficult but important work. It provides an enduring innovation compass.
Examples like Intuit, SNHU, American Girl, OnStar, and Deseret News show how a focus on the customer’s Job to Be Done can align organizations and drive success.

Does this help summarize the key ideas from the passage? Let me know if you need any part of the summary expanded on.

Here are a few key points about the boundaries and appropriate use of the Theory of Jobs to Be Done:

Jobs should be expressed in verbs and nouns, not adjectives. “Convenience” is not a job, but “I need to purchase groceries quickly and easily on my way home from work” is.
The job should be defined at the right level of abstraction - if only products within the same category can satisfy the need, it is likely too narrow to be considered a “job.”
The theory is best suited for understanding how customers choose between alternative solutions, not for explaining all human motivations.
The theory does not apply when products within the same class are the only options for getting a job done.
The theory works best when the “jobs” are uncovered through careful research into what customers are trying to achieve, not by making assumptions.
Anomalies or exceptions to the theory should be seen as opportunities to improve it, not to disprove it entirely.
The theory has boundaries, and should not be applied too broadly outside the domain of customer choice and product substitution.

In summary, the theory is powerful when applied appropriately to explain customer choice, but care should be taken not to overextend it beyond this core focus. Continued research to refine the theory is important.

Here are some key points about the breadth and depth of the Jobs to Be Done theory:

The theory has evolved over the past 20 years as it has been applied to many different problems and contexts. New examples and insights are still being discovered.
It has been applied to business examples like Drybar, military recruiting challenges, personal and family issues, public education reform, and health care system reform.
In each case, framing issues in terms of “jobs to be done” provides new perspective. For example, in education, the core job students are trying to do is feel successful and have friends each day. Traditional schools often fail at this job.
The theory can be insightful when applied to our roles as citizens and community members. For example, thinking about the job voters “hire” politicians to do versus what politicians think they are hired for.
The key is framing problems in terms of the underlying jobs that people are trying to get done. This frequently reveals new solutions or misalignments between what people need and what traditional institutions provide.
The Theory of Jobs to Be Done has been developed over nearly 20 years through extensive research and collecting data point by point. It provides a framework for understanding what causes successful innovation.
Clayton Christensen expresses deep gratitude to the many collaborators who have helped shape the theory, including Bob Moesta, Rick Pedi, Scott Cook, Michael Christensen, Dave Sundahl, Derek van Bever, Max Wessel, Laura Day, and colleagues at Innosight and Harvard Business School.
Each collaborator brought unique perspectives and expertise that challenged and strengthened the theory and its application. Their combined efforts over many years have made the Jobs Theory more robust, rigorous, and practical.
By understanding what causes innovation to succeed, Jobs Theory gives innovators tools to create offerings people will eagerly hire rather than relying on luck. It represents a better approach than outdated paradigms.
In summary, the development of Jobs Theory has been a long, iterative journey of co-creation enabled by devoted colleagues curious about what really drives innovation success. Their insights have profoundly shaped this body of knowledge.
Nitin Nohria, as dean of Harvard Business School, has supported efforts to engage alumni and foster innovation, such as the Forum for Innovation and Growth.
Christensen’s colleagues at the Christensen Institute have helped research important management problems.
Christensen expresses gratitude to his coauthors Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon, and Dave Duncan for their contributions to the book. He highlights their unique talents and perspectives.
Christensen also thanks his team members Emily Snyder and Jon Palmer for their indispensable support.
Christensen expresses gratitude to his agent, editor, and family members for their guidance and support.
Taddy Hall reflects on his rewarding 24-year friendship with Christensen since being his student. He thanks his coauthors and colleagues who helped improve the book.
Hall gives special thanks to innovators and friends like Linda Rottenberg of Endeavor for enabling them to apply and improve their theories.
Hall concludes by thanking his family members for their support during the process of writing the book.

a company’s mess becomes our opportunity,The (Hall), 210n5

dealerships vs. subscription services, 76–77

Alternative School for Math & Science. See under schools

Amazon, xiii, 139–140, 161, 162–165, 209–210

Jobs to be Done theory and, 223

measuring of process success by, 161, 162–165

online reviews and, 139–140

American Girl, 95–96, 123–127, 143, 208

American Heart Association, 19n3

anomalies

Job to be Done theory and value of, 40, 79, 223–224

manufacturing and improvement, 25

Anthony, Scott, 45n1

anxiety, about trying new products and procedures, 54, 71–72, 77–78, 84–85, 98–100, 102–103, 116–120, 132

Apple products, 143

Aristotle, 41–42

Arm & Hammer, 82–83

assumptions, about customer behavior, 45n3, 86–87, 182, 194n6

The key points about finding the job to be done are:

Look close to home for unsatisfied needs or frustrations. Observe your own experiences and those of people around you.
Look for nonconsumption - situations where people are unable to do something they want to do. Providing access can create new markets.
Look for compensating behaviors and workarounds. How are people getting a job done in an inefficient or ineffective way? There may be an opportunity to help them.
Look for unusual uses of products. People may be “hiring” existing products for a different job than intended. There could be potential for innovation.
Look at what people are trying to avoid doing. Helping people avoid unwanted jobs presents opportunities.
Consider the circumstances and emotional factors involved in getting a job done, not just the functional needs.
Finding the job to be done takes an investigative mindset - observe, question, reflect. The key is understanding people’s struggles in context.

The core idea is to uncover key jobs people are trying to get done but can’t, and find innovative ways your business can help them do it. This is how you create products and services people truly need.

Here is a summary of the key points from the book Big Hire/Little Hire:

The “job to be done” theory focuses on understanding the underlying goal or “job” that customers are trying to get done when they buy a product, rather than focusing on customer demographics or product attributes.
Leaders should keep focus on the job to be done, not just data about their existing products and processes. Data can provide false assurances and reflect only current circumstances.
There are three fallacies of innovation data that leaders should avoid:
- The fallacy of active vs passive data - focusing only on data from current customers rather than non-consumers
- The fallacy of conforming data - assuming customer goals conform to your product attributes
- The fallacy of surface growth - mistaking increasing revenue for successfully getting the job done
Leaders should visualize the job customers need to get done through techniques like minidocumentaries of customer experiences. This helps uncover unmet needs.
Companies should integrate their processes around the customer’s job to be done, not their internal organization structure. This removes obstacles customers face.
Creating experiences, purpose brands, and job “résumés” for products can reduce customer anxiety about switching and allow premium pricing.
Adopting a job focus realigns organizations around customer priorities, improves resource allocation, and enables handling growth.

In summary, the key is understanding the underlying “job” the customer is trying to do and integrating products and processes around this, rather than company structure or current data. This creates innovations that resonate.

Here are key points summarizing the authors’ background:

Clayton Christensen is an author, professor, and business consultant who has written 9 books on innovation and co-founded 4 companies, including Innosight. He has received the McKinsey Award for Harvard Business Review’s best article 5 times and was named the world’s most influential business thinker by Thinkers50 in 2011 and 2013.
Taddy Hall is a principal at the Cambridge Group and leader of Nielsen’s Breakthrough Innovation project. He helps executives create successful new products and improve innovation processes, with a focus on emerging markets.
Karen Dillon is a former editor of the Harvard Business Review and co-author of the bestseller How Will You Measure Your Life? She has degrees from Cornell and Northwestern.
David S. Duncan is a senior partner at Innosight who advises executives on innovation strategy and growth. He has a PhD in physics from Harvard.

#book-summary

Competing Against Luck The Story of Innov - Clayton M. Christensen