Module II·Article II·~2 min read
Jobs-to-be-Done: Understanding Customers' Deep Needs
Business Models and Value Proposition
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What is Job-to-be-Done
"People don’t buy a drill — they buy a hole in the wall," is a famous quote attributed to Theodore Levitt. Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) develops this idea: customers "hire" products and services to do a specific job in their lives.
Clayton Christensen, the author of the concept: "A job is the progress that a person seeks to make in specific circumstances."
Functional, Social, and Emotional Jobs
Each job has three dimensions:
Functional job — what the client literally wants to do: "move things from apartment A to apartment B."
Social job — how the client wants to look in the eyes of others: "appear to be a successful entrepreneur" when choosing an expensive office.
Emotional job — what the client wants to feel: "feel safe," "relieve anxiety."
The best products satisfy all three dimensions. iPhone: functionally — a smartphone; socially — a status object; emotionally — a sense of belonging to something stylish and smart.
The Jobs-to-be-Done Method in Strategy Development
JTBD helps to identify real competitors. If the job is "to kill time in a queue," the competitors of a smartphone are magazines, talking to a neighbor, daydreaming. If the job is "to stay in touch," the competitors of WhatsApp are calls, email, Telegram.
This opens up strategic opportunities: redefine the competitive field, find unnoticed competitors, create an offering that better "does the job."
Identifying Jobs through Interviews
Technique: an interview about past experience ("Tell me about the last time you…"). The focus is not on preferences, but on behavior. "What made you turn to X for the first time?," "What was happening in your life when you decided on Y?," "What disappointed you in past solutions?"
Practical Assignment
Choose a product or service that you use regularly. Determine: (1) What "job" do you "hire" this product to do? (2) What are the functional, social, and emotional components of this job? (3) Who are the real competitors of this product through the JTBD lens? (4) How does this change your view of the company's strategy?
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