How to Create a Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) Product Innovation Strategy
In this article you will learn:
In this article I’m going to share my recommendations on how to implement a JTBD function. It’s based on my experience working with the methodology for 15 years, experimentation, advisory, and discussions with my industry peers.
Product, Design, Marketing, and Strategy teams are looking for new innovation tactics since every single thing that’s been evangelized to them - while creating nice cottage industries - has failed to perform to their expectations. Product failure rates are as high as ever. While many are looking to Generative AI to save the day, it works with the same data they do - backward-looking. Accelerating and scaling data science misses a key consideration …
Customer Science
JTBD appears to be the best alternative (or complementary capability) to methods and practices that were designed for the solution-space. It’s a great way to focus on customers without falling into the trap of customer behaviors alone. With this approach, innovation leaders are less likely to burn their budgets by wasting time, effort, and dollars on approaches that have a success rate between 5-10% (and that’s a very generous range).
Imagine a world where our invested dollars weren’t wasted and we could apply what we lose today on more important problems for humanity!
A lot of innovation leaders have been in this situation:
“We need to launch JTBD research! Let’s do it!”
Then leadership says to the industry, “Yes, we’ve tried JTBD”
While in fact they’ve tried ‘standard ideation.’
Honestly, this is normal:
That’s why I decided to create this complete 5 part guide.
If I had to define JTBD I would start by describing the 5 pillars.
With these 5 pillars you will understand the true nature of JTBD.
You should focus on developing strategic options that closely align with your internal capabilities to deliver. You have to take into account capabilities you have today, capabilities you could build or develop in the near-term, and capabilities you could acquire and leverage profitably. Just because you have uncovered insights does not mean they are actionable today.
It’s different than idea-first approaches to innovation which attempt to develop ‘valuable’ ideas and then test them - expensively or inexpensively - in the market with no way of knowing what the value is, or if there is value at all before having to invest $$$$’s.
You might not realize this, but JTBD can be a long and manual process. Historically, these projects have taken 4 to 6 months and hundreds of thousands of dollars to complete (with consultants who know how to do it properly). So, the question you should ask is: is it worth it? Here’s what you need to analyze in order to make that decision:
Time invested compared to potential return on investment
<aside> 📌 Note: You should measure the cost of initial attempts to hire or learn about JTBD strategy and take that into consideration. However, you should also ask yourself what the outcome could look like spread across all future innovation research investments. If you invest to learn it, and do it right the first time it will be a game-changer for your business and everyone else will be wondering what you know that they don’t know.
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