In Phase II, the ODI practitioner creates a questionnaire (an online survey) that is used to collect the quantitative data. The survey is administered to a set of external customers (usually between 180 and 3000 people) that are representative of the population. The ODI practitioner uses a stringent set of quality standards that Strategyn has developed over the years to ensure only valid customer data is collected.
Once the data is collected, the ODI practitioner validates the responses and then conducts Outcome-Based Segmentation, competitive, market sizing, positioning, and other analyses.
With the data analyses completed, the ODI practitioner works with the team to apply this data to (i) better position existing products and services, (ii) improve existing products and services, and (iii) create new products and services that will deliver significant new value.
The research that occurs during Phase II is also designed to shift the product team’s thinking along a number of fronts (see table below).
Expected Impact of Phase II: Quantitative Insights
Team Thinking Before Phase II
Team Thinking After Phase II
Nobody knows with certainty what customer needs are unmet and to what degree.
Everybody on the product team knows what needs are unmet and to what degree.
The segmentation model that managers use obscures differences in unmet customer needs (they focus on phantom targets).
Marketing and development managers use a segmentation model based on differences in unmet customer needs.
The company’s competitive strengths and weaknesses relate to speeds and feeds.
The company’s competitive strengths and weaknesses relate to addressing unmet needs.
The market strategy is based on personas and qualitative insights.
The market strategy is based on quantitative ODI-based market research. It is data-driven.
The product team does not agree on what market strategy to pursue.
The product team agrees on what market strategy to pursue and how to create customer value.
There is no agreement on what product and service concepts to pursue and invest in.
There is cross-functional agreement on what product concepts to pursue and invest in.
For years to come, the model built from this data set will help the team conceptualize and evaluate ideas for possible pursuit.
PHASE III: USE YOUR NEW CUSTOMER INSIGHTS TO DRIVE GROWTH
Having valuable customer data is one thing. Knowing how to use it is another. The types of data we capture and provide using our ODI-based research methods – job maps, opportunity landscapes, desired-outcome statements, outcome-based segments, opportunity scores, and so on – can be used to address dozens of challenges. For example, they can be used to:
Create an outcome-driven digital marketing strategy, e.g., Google AdWords and SEO campaign, etc.
Help the sales team deliver the right message to the right customer
Inform your marketing communications program
Reposition existing products around your competitive strengths
Make improvements to existing products and services
Conceptualize breakthrough, radical, and disruptive product ideas
Drive decisions on research and development
Inform merger and acquisition decisions
While many applications of the data are possible, using the data takes training. Phase III is dedicated to teaching managers and employees across the organization how to leverage their newfound customer insights. In both classroom training and hands-on workshops, the ODI practitioner teaches your product teams to make outcome-driven business decisions across a wide range of subjects. The education and training provided by the ODI practitioner are also designed to shift the product team’s thinking along a number of fronts (see table below).
Expected Impact of Phase III: Implementation
Team Thinking Before Phase III
Team Thinking After Phase III
The team’s focus is on beating the competition.
The team’s focus is on helping customers get a job done better and/or more cheaply.
Innovation is about coming up with ideas and seeing if they address unmet customer needs.
Innovation is about uncovering unmet customer needs and finding solutions that address them.
Products are positioned around customer emotions.
Products are positioned around both functional jobs and outcomes and emotional needs.
The person with the loudest voice or the one in the most senior position influences the product team.
Customer data and facts influence the product team.
Technology, ideas, and capabilities drive strategy and decision-making.
Unmet customer needs dictate what ideas, technologies, and capabilities to invest in.
Decisions are made using qualitative customer insights and intuition.
Decisions are made using quantitative customer insights. Intuition is not acceptable.
Upon completion of Phase III, the product team will possess the ability to use ODI-based market research data and market and product strategy insights to consistently make business decisions that create customer value. They will have an outcome-driven mind-set, and your company will have successfully created a customer-centric culture of innovation. A product team can expect to complete its three-phase outcome-driven journey in four to six months.
Nothing is left to chance. Or luck.
Applying the Outcome-Driven Innovation process changes everything. It enables a company to:
Discover hidden opportunities.
Formulate market and product strategies that will undermine established leaders.
Mitigate the risk of failure.
Create what customers want.
Predict what new products will win in the marketplace.
Discover new markets.
With its 86 percent success rate, that is the power of the ODI process.
8 .
THE LANGUAGE OF JOBS-TO-BE-DONE
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A common language of innovation has the power to unite an organization in its effort to build a competency in innovation. The introduction of Jobs Theory presents companies with an opportunity to redefine the language of innovation from the customer’s perspective; and an opportunity to understand and discuss innovation by seeing it through a new lens. These are the terms we use to define the concepts that comprise Jobs Theory and Outcome-Driven Innovation.
Brainstorming – An unbounded method of idea generation that encourages the creation of hundreds of ideas.
Business model canvas – A strategic management and entrepreneurial tool created by Alexander Osterwalder and Strategyzer that helps companies describe, design, challenge, invent, and pivot their business model.
Consumption chain jobs – The jobs that the product lifecycle support team must get done throughout the product lifecycle. These jobs include installation, set up, and storing, transporting, maintaining, repairing, cleaning, upgrading, and disposing of the product.
Creativity – The mental process by which an idea is triggered and conceived.
Customer – A constituent for whom the company chooses to create value. Key customers include the end user (the functional job executor), the purchase decision maker (buyer), and the product lifecycle support team (people who install, maintain, and repair the offering).
Customer need – A metric that customers use to measure the successful execution of a functional job or a consumption chain job. Synonymous with desired outcome.
Desired outcome – A metric that customers use to measure the successful execution of a functional job or a consumption chain job. Synonymous with customer need.
Differentiated strategy – A company pursues a differentiated strategy when it discovers and targets a population of underserved consumers with a new product or service offering that gets a job (or multiple jobs) done significantly better, but at a significantly higher p
rice.
Discreet strategy – A company pursues a discrete strategy when it targets a population of “restricted” customers with a product that gets the job done worse, yet costs more.
Disruptive strategy – A company pursues a disruptive strategy when it discovers and targets a population of overserved customers or nonconsumers with a new product or service offering that enables them to get a job done more cheaply, but not as well as competing solutions.
Dominant strategy – A company pursues a dominant strategy when it targets all consumers in a market with a new product or service offering that gets a job done significantly better and for significantly less money.
Emotional jobs – Statements that describe the way customers want to be perceived or feel when executing a core functional job.
End user – This is a person who ultimately uses the product or service to execute the functional job the product is intended to perform. Also the functional job executor.
Financial outcomes – The financial metrics that the purchase decision maker uses to decide what product or service to purchase.
Functional Job-to-be-Done – The primary task or fundamental goal an end user is trying to accomplish or problem they are trying to resolve in a given situation.
Idea – An output of the creative process that defines a way in which specific unmet customer needs can be satisfied.
Ideas-first approach to innovation – An inherently flawed approach to innovation that starts with the generation of ideas and is followed by evaluation and filtering methods that determine which ideas customers like best without ever explicitly understanding their needs.
Industry – The collective set of companies that offer solutions to help customers get a job done.
Innovation – The process of devising a product or service concept that addresses the customer’s unmet needs, thus enabling the customer to get a job done better and/or more cheaply.
Job executor – The group of people who are targeted for value creation. The job executor could be the functional job executor (end user), the purchase decision maker (buyer), or someone who executes a consumption chain job, such as the installer.
Job map – A visual depiction of a functional job, deconstructed into its discreet process steps. Unlike a process map, a job map does not show what the customer is doing (a solution view); rather, it describes what the customer is trying to get done (a needs view).
Job-to-be-Done – A task, goal or objective a person is trying to accomplish or a problem they are trying to resolve. A job can be functional, emotional or associated with product consumption (consumption chain jobs).
Jobs-to-be-Done Growth Strategy Matrix – A framework that illustrates when and how to deploy a differentiated, dominant, disruptive, discreet or sustaining growth strategy.
Jobs-to-be-Done Needs Framework – A visual depiction of the structure and relationship of all the customer inputs that are needed to effectively execute the innovation process.
Jobs-to-be-Done Theory – The notion that people buy products and services to get a job done and that new products and services win in the marketplace if they help customers get a job done better and/or more cheaply.
Market – A group of people (end users) and the core functional job or jobs they are trying to get done. Parents (a group of people) who are trying to pass on life lessons to their children (the Job-to-be-Done) constitute a market. Dental hygienists who clean patients’ teeth and farmers who grow a crop also constitute markets.
Needs-first approach to innovation – An approach to innovation in which companies first uncover the customer’s needs, then determine which are unmet, and then devise solutions to address those unmet needs.
New market – A new job that a group of customers want to get done because of changes in policy or conditions, scientific discoveries, or in support of a new technology, or a job that a significant group of customers now want to get done due to a demographic trend.
Market selection – The process of deciding what customers and Jobs-to-be-Done to target to create new revenue streams.
Market strategy – A plan that a company devises in order to achieve and maintain a unique and valued competitive position in a market. A market strategy includes the creation of a value proposition, product positioning and messaging, and the formulation of a digital marketing strategy.
ODI-based research methods – The qualitative and quantitative research methods that are integral to the Outcome-Driven Innovation process.
Opportunity – An unmet need; a desired outcome that is both important and poorly satisfied (underserved), or a desired outcome that is unimportant and very well satisfied (overserved).
Opportunity algorithm – The formula used to determine the degree to which a specific outcome or related or emotional job is under- or overserved. It is defined as opportunity = importance + max(importance – satisfaction, 0).
Opportunity landscape – A visual depiction of the opportunities that exist in a market and the degree to which the customer’s desired outcomes are under-or overserved.
Outcome-based creativity triggers – A set of creativity triggers created by Strategyn that provide inventors with possible ways to address underserved unmet desired outcomes.
Outcome-Based SegmentationTM – A method by which segments of customers with uniquely different underserved desired outcome can be discovered, sized and targeted.
Outcome-driven brainstorming – The process of conceptualizing new platforms, business models, and features that address underserved segments and desired outcomes discovered through the use of ODI-based research methods.
Outcome-Driven Innovation® (ODI) – A strategy and innovation process that ties customer-defined metrics (desired outcomes) to the Job-to-be-Done, making value creation (and innovation) measurable and predictable. The process employs qualitative, quantitative, and market segmentation methods that reveal hidden opportunities for growth. ODI has an 86 percent success rate—a five-fold improvement over the industry average.
Overserved market segment – A segment of customers with a majority of desired outcomes that are unimportant and well satisfied.
Process of disruptive innovation - The introduction of a series of products, the first of which employs a disruptive strategy that gets the job done worse and more cheaply, followed by a series of products that build on that technology platform, with more and more features, until the newest offerings get the job done better and more cheaply.
Product lifecycle support team – People (customers) who help install, set up, store, transport, maintain, repair, clean, upgrade, and dispose of the product, and perform other support services as necessary.
Purchase decision maker – The person responsible for executing the “buying” job: seeking out and evaluating alternative offerings and deciding which to buy.
Qualitative research – Market research methods used to uncover the customer’s desired outcomes and other inputs that comprise the Jobs-to-be-Done needs framework.
Quantitative research – Market research methods used to gather the statistically valid data needed to conduct Outcome-Based Segmentation analysis and other data analyses that comprise the ODI process.
Related jobs – Functional jobs the end user is trying to get done in conjunction with the core functional job. Getting more jobs done on a single platform make the platform more valuable.
Strategyn – The company that pioneered Jobs Theory and created the Outcome-Driven Innovation process.
Strategyn Jobs-to-be-Done toolkit - A toolkit that includes a starter-workshop and the materials, templates and tools that Strategyn’s consultants use to execute ODI-based projects for Strategyn clients.
Sustaining strategy - A company pursues a sustaining strategy when it introduces a new product or service offering that gets the job done only slightly better and/or slightly cheaper.
Underserved market – A market in which the majority of the customer’s desired outcomes are important and poorly satis
fied.
Unmet need – A desired outcome or related or emotional job that is both important and poorly satisfied.
9.
LEARN MORE
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A BRIEF HISTORY OF JOBS-TO-BE-DONE
1962
Theodore Levitt said, “people don’t want a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole.”
1984
IBM’s PCjr is introduced into the market and immediately called a flop. The failure inspired Tony Ulwick to try to create an innovation process that mitigates the risk of failure.
1990
Ulwick has an epiphany: if a company focused on the process of creating a “quarter inch hole” instead of creating a better drill, it could apply Six-Sigma principles to study the underlying process and offer a new path to innovation.
1991
The Total Quality Group is founded by Tony Ulwick. The goal of the company is to put his new theory and innovation process (CD-MAP) into practice.
Jobs to be Done: Theory to Practice Page 13