{"id":890070,"date":"2020-09-16T11:25:15","date_gmt":"2020-09-16T09:25:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/?post_type=articles&p=890070"},"modified":"2020-10-29T15:13:28","modified_gmt":"2020-10-29T14:13:28","slug":"jobs-to-be-done-innovation-guided-by-an-understanding-of-the-customer","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/articles\/jobs-to-be-done-innovation-guided-by-an-understanding-of-the-customer\/","title":{"rendered":"Jobs-to-Be-Done: Innovation Guided by an Understanding of the Customer"},"featured_media":890071,"template":"","meta":{"_has_post_settings":[]},"schools":[29,33,35],"areas":[20,21,22,24],"subjects":[416,417,424],"class_list":["post-890070","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","schools-business-school","schools-human-sciences-and-technology","schools-university","areas-human-behavior","areas-innovation","areas-sales-marketing","areas-strategy","subjects-business-and-finance","subjects-entrepreneurship","subjects-marketing"],"custom-fields":{"wpcf-article-summary-enable":["1"],"wpcf-article-summary":["Every decision a customer makes is motivated by an unmet need or an unsolved problem. Functional, emotional, and social factors always play a role in the customer\u2019s actions. Given this reality, organizations should redirect their focus and place customers at the center of everything they do, with the aim of detecting new opportunities and developing successful innovations. The jobs-to-be-done framework is based on this idea. Scott Anthony, a senior partner at Innosight, discusses the need to venture out into the market and discover what problems customers are trying to solve, in what context, and under what specific circumstances."],"wpcf-article-leadin":["Organizations need to improve their capacity to innovate, but their approach to this challenge is sometimes less than ideal. In this interview, Scott Anthony, a senior partner at the growth strategy consulting firm Innosight, shares the keys to innovation: put customers at the center of everything you do, understand their needs, and identify their jobs-to-be-done."],"wpcf-article-body":["Mar\u00eda Eizaguirre:<\/strong> Surveys have shown that most executives consider innovation<\/a> an extremely important part of their growth<\/a> strategies<\/a>, yet they remain dissatisfied with their organizations\u2019 performance in this area. How do you explain this?<\/span>\r\n\r\nScott Anthony:<\/strong> The foundation of innovation<\/a> is customer centricity\u2014the company\u2019s capacity to place the customer at the center of everything it does<\/u>. Innovation should always start from there. We continually observe that organizations overly focus on demographic research and consumer behavior<\/a> analysis. As a result, the data they obtain show correlations but cannot explain what lies behind the decisions consumers make. That leads to dissatisfaction because it seems like they are \u201cshooting in the dark\". What you really need is a causality model that explains why A causes B, which would allow you to spot opportunities and threats and chart a clear path towards innovation.\r\n\r\nMar\u00eda Eizaguirre:<\/strong> So it\u2019s a matter of discovering the customer\u2019s real motivations.<\/span>\r\n\r\nScott Anthony:<\/strong> Exactly. This idea has been around for a long time. Back in the 1960s, Theodore Levitt identified a fundamental mistake that many companies made: defining their business in terms of categories. That\u2019s not how customers think\u2014they\u2019re focused on whatever problem they need to solve. Companies should therefore turn their attention to the jobs that their customers need done. The jobs-to-be-done<\/a> (JTBD) framework starts with the idea of putting customers and the problems they want to solve at the center of the innovation<\/a> equation.\r\n
The foundation of innovation is customer centricity\u2014the company\u2019s capacity to place the customer at the center of everything it does.<\/blockquote>\r\nMar\u00eda Eizaguirre:<\/strong> How can companies decide which JTBDs deserve their attention and which ones do not?<\/span>\r\n\r\nScott Anthony:<\/strong> Jobs should be prioritized if they satisfy three criteria. First, importance. A job is important if there will be significant consequences if the customer is unable to find a satisfactory solution. Second, dissatisfaction. If the existing solutions yield unsatisfactory outcomes, there is room for new ones. And third, high value. A high-value job is something that many customers need done frequently or that a few customers would be willing to pay a lot to get done. The sum of these three criteria tells you whether or not a job should be prioritized.\r\n\r\nMar\u00eda Eizaguirre:<\/strong> You seem fully convinced of the effectiveness of this approach.<\/span>\r\n\r\nScott Anthony:<\/strong> Yes, for several reasons. It goes deep into the consumer\u2019s mind and tries to understand what drives them to action. It gets at the real motivation behind the need and helps us understand why people make decisions, taking functional, social, and emotional factors into account. Moreover, this approach helps organizations become more aware of their competition, especially outside the context of their category, which opens up the possibility of cross-category solutions. Bear in mind that people\u2019s basic problems don\u2019t change very much, so when you discover a deeply held problem that is not well solved, the path towards innovation<\/a> starts to come into focus. Of course, my conviction also comes from seeing many companies successfully drive innovation-led growth<\/a> by embracing jobs-to-be-done thinking!\r\n
Cultural change is never easy. In order to overcome barriers to innovation, first you have to determine what behavior you want to encourage.<\/blockquote>\r\nMar\u00eda Eizaguirre:<\/strong> Can you offer any advice on discovering JTBDs?<\/span>\r\n\r\nScott Anthony:<\/strong> We think of four \u201cC\u201d words: Context, circumstances, compensatory behaviors<\/a>, and constraints. It is critical to venture out into the market and be in context <\/em>with customers. Observation-based study methods that get to the root of people\u2019s motivations help to discover unmet needs and devise compelling solutions. It is also important to understand different circumstances,<\/em> since the notion of quality depends on them: what is acceptable in some cases may not be in others. Compensatory behaviors,<\/em> when people do the \u2018wrong thing\u201d with a product or service, are a sign of dissatisfaction: something has been left undone. If you are on the lookout for this type of behavior, you can detect opportunities for improvement. Finally, it is important to identify the constraints,<\/em> or barriers that prevent customers from getting jobs done. After all, a time-tested path to innovation<\/a> is to make it simpler and easier for people to address frustrating problems.\r\n\r\nMar\u00eda Eizaguirre:<\/strong> Let\u2019s talk about constraints and barriers. Many organizations run into internal constraints or barriers that diminish their ability to innovate<\/a>. What can they do to unlock their internal potential?<\/span>\r\n\r\nScott Anthony:<\/strong> Cultural change is never easy. In order to overcome barriers to innovation<\/a>, first you have to determine what behavior<\/a> you want to encourage<\/u> and figure out what is blocking it. Then you can introduce behavior enablers<\/em>, artifacts<\/em>, and nudges <\/em>to encourage the adoption of the behavior. With these tools\u2014known by the acronym BEANs<\/a>\u2014you can break down obstacles to creativity and innovation and foster an internal culture of customer centricity. Behavior enablers are anything that directly encourages and favors change: coaching, applications, rituals, etc. Nudges are things that encourage the desired behavior indirectly: office design, gamification, storytelling\u2014anything that prompts people to start doing something naturally. Artifacts connect the other two elements and support the behavioral change: professional awards, objects to display on your desk, screensavers that remind you of expected behaviors, etc. If you can combine these three components with BEANs such as Tata\u2019s Dare to Try prize (which encourages risk-taking), Adobe\u2019s Kickbox program (which encourages experimentation), or Amazon\u2019s Empty Seat ritual (which encourages customer-centricity) you can unlock creativity.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n\u00a9 IE Insights."],"wpcf-article-extract-enable":["1"],"wpcf-article-extract":["Organizations need to improve their capacity to innovate, but their approach to this challenge is sometimes less than ideal. In this interview, Scott Anthony<\/strong>, a senior partner at the growth strategy consulting firm Innosight, shares the keys to innovation: put customers at the center of everything you do, understand their needs, and identify their jobs-to-be-done."]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles\/890070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/articles"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/890071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=890070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"schools","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/schools?post=890070"},{"taxonomy":"areas","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/areas?post=890070"},{"taxonomy":"subjects","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/subjects?post=890070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}