{"id":8475,"date":"2015-12-10T00:48:09","date_gmt":"2015-12-10T08:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/intercom.com\/blog\/?p=8475"},"modified":"2022-10-20T22:03:37","modified_gmt":"2022-10-20T21:03:37","slug":"podcast-tony-ulwick-on-jobs-to-be-done","status":"publish","type":"intercom-podcast","link":"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/podcasts\/podcast-tony-ulwick-on-jobs-to-be-done\/","title":{"rendered":"Strategyn’s Tony Ulwick on Jobs-to-be-Done"},"content":{"rendered":"

The founder of innovation consulting firm Strategyn<\/a>, he\u2019s helped hundreds of companies create new goods and services using JTBD principles, as well as his Outcome-Driven Innovation process. The latter is chronicled in Tony\u2019s best-selling book What Customers Want<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

I caught up with Tony to get his take on why the popular Silicon Valley innovation strategy of \u201cpivot and fail fast\u201d is flawed, and how to identify and map the Job-to-be-Done. From surgical tools and circular saws to building playlists and circumventing highway traffic, Tony\u2019s multidisciplinary anecdotes illustrate the wide ranging application of this philosophy.<\/p>\n

If you like what you hear, check out more podcast episodes<\/a>. Or subscribe to the Inside Intercom Podcast on iTunes<\/a>, Stitcher<\/a> or over at SoundCloud<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What follows is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation. Short on time? Here are nine quick takeaways from our chat.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The problem with the pivot and fail fast approach<\/a> to innovation \u2013 it guesses at what unmet needs might exist without ever defining them.<\/li>\n
  2. Einstein said, \u201cIf I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.\u201d This is how Outcome-Driven Innovation works.<\/a> The hard part is identifying and prioritizing unmet needs.<\/li>\n
  3. To create a better product<\/a>, you have to measure how well the current iteration does the job from three angles: the functional perspective, financial perspective, and consumption chain perspective.<\/li>\n
  4. Getting a job done better<\/a> means doing it faster, more predictably, and with higher output. That criteria is universal across jobs and should guide research questions.<\/li>\n
  5. JTBD research should focus on actual users<\/a>. They \u2013 not prospective users \u2013 have the experience to know what\u2019s important and satisfying when getting the job done.<\/li>\n
  6. A product might satisfy an emotional job<\/a> at the point of purchase (e.g. a luxury vehicle), but it will be judged on getting the job done from that point afterward.<\/li>\n
  7. Personas should be built on a foundation of statistical user data<\/a>, rather than observations. The latter is an imaginary target, while the former segments around unmet needs.<\/li>\n
  8. Market segmentation is critical, because people can struggle to get a job done in a myriad of ways<\/a>.<\/li>\n
  9. <\/a>Before committing to a new product, revisit your marketing strategy<\/a>. Your product may already do the job, but lacks messaging built around this idea.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    \n

    Des Traynor:<\/strong> You said a while ago that pivoting and failing fast are not great techniques for producing innovation. We\u2019re here in San Francisco, the land of pivoting, the land of failing fast. What\u2019s wrong with this approach?<\/p>\n

    Tony Ulwick:<\/strong> It\u2019s associated with failure, unfortunately. When you think about innovation, what you\u2019re trying to do is to come up with solutions that address unmet needs. The way I go about this is more like trying to solve an equation, and like any good equation there are constants and variables.<\/p>\n

    In this equation, what\u2019s the variable? What\u2019s the constant? Most people would tell you that needs and solutions are both variables. They’re ever-changing, so you can never solve the equation. This is why I think companies go down the pivot and fail fast mentality and say, \u201cWell, if we can\u2019t figure out what the needs are, let\u2019s just keep coming up with solutions and keep pivoting, or fail fast until we get it right.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Des:<\/strong> Like a brute force approach?<\/p>\n

    Tony: <\/strong>It is. It\u2019s a guess, right? In any given market there might be 100 needs and 15 might be unmet. You\u2019re just hoping to come up with a solution that addresses those 15 unmet needs. The chances of you randomly doing that are pretty slim. That\u2019s why you have to pivot and fail fast and iterate and get there slowly, and most companies just don\u2019t get there. It\u2019s a time-consuming, wasteful approach that is unnecessary.<\/p>\n

    Our thought is, \u201cWhy should you fail at all?\u201d The goal should be to know what those 15 unmet needs are upfront and then spend your time trying to come up with solutions that address them. What are the chances of you randomly coming up with a solution that addresses those 15 unmet needs, if you don\u2019t know what they are? They\u2019re not good, but flip it around. <\/a>What are the chances of you solving and satisfying 15 unmet needs if you know exactly what they are? That\u2019s really the essence of what Outcome-Driven Innovation is all about.<\/p>\n

    What makes a need?<\/h2>\n

    Des:<\/strong> The pivot and fail fast folks would argue that they do this because they have yet to find a method that presents these unmet needs on a silver platter. You know what they often say; a problem well stated is a problem half solved. Is it the type of situation where if you have research to understand the unmet needs then the solution becomes obvious?<\/p>\n

    Tony:<\/strong> It is. Einstein said, \u201cIf I had an hour to solve a problem, I would spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.\u201d This is pretty much the same thing. What we\u2019re really trying to do is to find those unmet needs. What is the problem that the customer is trying to solve?<\/p>\n

    The answer has become pretty apparent, and I\u2019ll give you a good example. When we worked with Bosch helping them create their CS20 circular saw, we spent two months defining and uncovering the unmet needs in one segment of the market. This was interesting because the circular saw has been around for a long time. It\u2019s a commodity type market, and they weren\u2019t sure there were any unmet needs.<\/p>\n

    \"Einstein<\/p>\n

    When we looked at the market as a whole we didn\u2019t see any unmet needs either, so we segmented the market around unmet needs and found a segment of customers that struggled more than others to get the job done. The reason was they had to make more finished cuts. They had to make more blade height changes, they had to make more blade angle changes, and because they had encountered these different variables that caused complexity, they were underserved along a number of different dimensions. We discovered precisely what\u00a0unmet needs they were struggling with, and we came up with the CS20 circular saw to address those needs.<\/p>\n

    It took us two months to identify those needs and prioritize them, but it took the engineers three hours to come up with the solutions that address them \u2013 three hours.<\/p>\n

    Now, the reason is, as they said, \u201cWe\u2019ve had all these ideas before, but the problem is we\u2019ve had thousands of ideas before. We didn\u2019t know that these were the 14 of the several thousand ideas that really were meaningful.\u201d
    \n\"CS20
    \nDes:<\/strong> One of the sentences there, it sounds almost like a sleight of hand, \u201cWe segmented the market around unmet needs.\u201d What does that look like? How do you do that?<\/p>\n

    Tony:<\/strong> This is one of the key governances and advancements in our approach. It starts with the fact that customers do have unmet needs. It makes sense. Marketing 101 suggests that you want to discover segments that have different unmet needs.<\/p>\n

    Now, if you are going to discover segments of customers with different unmet needs, what is it that you should segment around? Attitudes? Behaviors? Demographics? Psychographics? Or unmet needs? It is obvious but it\u2019s not usually done that way. Our take is that if you want to discover segments of unmet needs, then segment around unmet needs. The problem is that in most companies there\u2019s not an agreement on what a need even is, and in most research methods, they don\u2019t describe what a need statement is. It\u2019s the most critical input into the innovation process yet the definition is extremely vague in most situations.<\/p>\n

    I\u2019ve seen ethnographic work done where you get 300 pages of detailed information, but what are the needs in there? What constitutes a needs statement? What are the characteristics of a good need input? What structure, context, and syntax does it have to have?
    \nAll those questions get ignored in most cases. So if we can\u2019t agree on what a need is then it\u2019s going to be really hard to agree on what the customers\u2019 needs are, which ones are unmet, and what segments of customers exist with different unmet needs. It\u2019s Marketing 101 and it all goes back to, \u201cWhy aren\u2019t we doing it this way?\u201d Well, it\u2019s because we can\u2019t agree on what a need is. What we\u2019ve spent two decades trying to answer is that key question. What\u2019s a need? The way we describe it, it\u2019s a desired outcome statement.
    \n\"\"
    \nThe way we define that is when people buy products to get jobs done, they use a set of metrics to judge how well they are getting the job done. The metrics used to measure value and success are the customers\u2019 needs. We call those metrics desired outcome statements. They have a very specific set of characteristics; they have a specific structure, format, content, etc.<\/p>\n

    Des:<\/strong> When you say it has a precise structure, are you really saying that they are objective and include no opinion about a customer?<\/p>\n

    Tony:<\/strong> Well, they certainly include no opinion on a solution. One of the key characteristics of an outcome statement is that it is free from a technology reference or any solution or approach, because the goal of innovation is to come up with solutions that address unmet needs. If you\u2019re going to customers to understand their needs and they are offering up solutions or technologies or ideas, then you\u2019re getting the wrong input.<\/p>\n

    We know that sounds simple and most people recognize that, yet more than half of the outcomes or need statements that our clients bring to us from previous research are just embedded with ideas. It\u2019s very hard to work away from the the ideas-first mentality and come up with a perfect needs statement.<\/p>\n

    Des:<\/strong> Say somebody wants to manage projects. Their idea statement will be something like, \u201cI need to minimize the amount of time I spend scheduling things in my calendar.\u201d They embed their ideas about the solution in the statement of their need, right?<\/p>\n

    Tony: <\/strong>That\u2019s exactly right. In that statement you mentioned their calendar.<\/a> Why does it have to be a calendar? You assumed that part of the solution in your need statement. We would never allow that kind of thing, and that happens all the time.<\/p>\n

    Mapping the job to be done<\/h2>\n

    Des:<\/strong> When you\u2019re doing research how do you take that to people who have unmet needs? Do you start with just general satisfaction with the product area?<\/p>\n

    Tony:<\/strong> Before coming up with the unmet needs, we have to come up with needs, and that takes the longest period of time. To do that, we create what we call a job map. For those of you who have done business process work and process improvement, I think you can relate to this because what we literally do is define the Job-to-be-Done as a process. It\u2019s a set of tasks that people go through from the beginning to end to accomplish a goal, and what we do is we break down that job into job steps.
    \n\"\"
    \nFor a given job, there might be 15 to 20 different steps, and then within each step there\u2019s a series of metrics people use to measure success in getting that step of the job done. For example, if the job is listening to music, one of those steps might be to organize the music and one of the outcomes might be to minimize the time it takes to organize the songs in the order in which you want to hear them.<\/p>\n

    We\u2019re not referring to records, CDs, iPods, or anything else. It\u2019s agnostic to the technology, and it\u2019s hard to do. It just takes practice.<\/p>\n

    Des:<\/strong> How do you stop yourself from falling onto a very abstract definition of a need and prescribing a solution to something like \u201cMake me more successful\u201d?<\/p>\n

    Tony:<\/strong> Jobs that require products and services to address them are very functional. We like to define the job that people are trying to get done in a functional manner.<\/p>\n

    That\u2019s not to say they don\u2019t have emotional jobs they are trying to get done as well. Sure, if you\u2019re listening to music or throwing a party, you want to be perceived in a certain way by your friends. You want to be perceived as successful and appreciated. There\u2019s a whole series of things that you want, but you\u2019re not designing a product to make someone feel appreciated or to be successful. You can\u2019t. What if I were to say, \u201cLet\u2019s design a product to make somebody feel successful.\u201d There\u2019s a lack of context. There\u2019s no function associated with it.<\/p>\n

    What we\u2019d like to do is define the job around the functional element that you\u2019re trying to accomplish. When we do research we capture emotional jobs that you\u2019re trying to get done while getting that functional job done, but we understand the functional job because we\u2019re trying to execute. If it\u2019s listening to music, we break that down into component parts or steps, and then look at the metrics they use to measure value in getting the job done. That\u2019s one key thing, but there\u2019s more to it than that.<\/p>\n

    When we think about customers \u2013 and this is often the first question \u2013 people say, \u201cWell, who are our customers? We have lots of customers, so how do you even get started?\u201d It\u2019s true, companies have lots of customers, and they come with different titles, which makes it even more complicated. But in a general nature, rather than customers, let\u2019s look at, what kind of metrics do you need to create a perfect product? Let\u2019s answer that question.<\/p>\n

    We need the metrics that people are going to use to judge the function of value of the product to get the job done \u2013 to listen to music. We need to get the financial metrics that people are going to use to decide whether they should buy streaming services or a MP3 player: cost of ownership, cost of replacement, cost of upgrade, etc. They are also going to use a set of what we call consumption chain metrics to judge value.<\/p>\n

    People have to receive their products, set them up, install them, interface with them, maintain them, upgrade them, and replace them. People aren\u2019t buying it so that they can maintain and update it. They\u2019re buying it to get this functional job done, but they do have metrics that they use to judge value around those consumption chain elements as well. If you understand all the metrics people are using to judge the value of your products from a functional perspective, a financial perspective, and a consumption chain perspective, you have all the metrics you need to create a better product.<\/p>\n

    Then the question is, who are you going to get those metrics from? That\u2019s who your customers are. Rather than asking, \u201cOkay, is it the nurses, is it the surgeon, is it the hospital administrator, is it the Operating Room (OR) manager?\u201d It might be all those, but if you are creating a part for a surgeon to use, are you going to go to the nurse to get the functional outcomes? No, you\u2019re going to go to the surgeon to get functional outcomes because they are the ones that know what they\u2019re trying to use product for.<\/p>\n

    Who are you going to for financial metrics? The surgeon? Probably not, because they\u2019re not concerned about the financial elements. They\u2019re concerned about the functional elements, but the OR manager or the buying group would be concerned about minimizing the length of stay or minimizing the cost of tools and things like that. Then, who might be involved in minimizing the time it takes to set up the product or the time to sterilize? <\/a>Well, that could be the nurse or the biomedical engineers. We apply who\u2019s doing the job after we define the kinds of metrics we need to create a great product.<\/p>\n

    The makings of a better outcome<\/h2>\n

    Des:<\/strong> How good are users at explaining what their needs are?<\/p>\n

    Tony:<\/strong> They are good at expressing their needs. To understand the unmet needs across a broad range of the population is something different, but I think the real question that you are asking is, how difficult is it for an individual to express their desired outcome statement?<\/p>\n

    Des: <\/strong>Yeah, because I\u2019m sure I\u2019ve made decisions on music products based on minimizing time to create a playlist, but I don\u2019t think that was the active part of my decision. Certainly I don\u2019t think, \u201cOh, I\u2019ve got to create this playlist in under 2.4 seconds.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Tony:<\/strong> That\u2019s right, but somewhere along that line, you used that metric to judge value. You probably used 50, 60, or 70 metrics over the years to judge this product versus that product. I\u2019m not going to say they\u2019re subconscious because they really aren’t. It\u2019s just not at the front of your mind. This is why it\u2019s really important to create the job map \u2013 to remind you of all the steps you had to go through to get that job done.<\/p>\n

    If the surgeon is preparing the patient, positioning them, and then accessing the place where we have to operate and perform the procedure, there are lots of steps. I like picking on surgeons because they are so process oriented. They\u2019ve gone through the same process so many times, performed the same procedure over and over again, and they know exactly step by step what they are trying to do as they are going through that process.<\/p>\n

    As you take them on that journey and ask them specific questions about all the steps they\u2019re going through, they can go deep into detail on each one. It\u2019s interesting because the way to get a job done better is to get it done faster, more predictably, with higher output, so it\u2019s faster, has no variability, and is 100 percent efficient. That would be perfect, right? When we ask questions about each of those steps, we ask, \u201cWhat is so time consuming about this step?\u201d or, \u201cWhat makes it so unpredictable? What makes it unreliable?\u201d<\/p>\n

    We get at these very specific needs that we\u2019re looking for and what makes it inefficient. That kind of questioning leads to good outcome statements. When we have a complete list of outcome statements from beginning to end in a job, it\u2019s the chronological order of everything they (the surgeons) are considering when they are getting the job done.<\/p>\n

    Des: <\/strong>Those criteria of more predictable, or faster, or more efficient, how localized is that to surgeons? Is that because a surgery has a binary outcome \u2013 did we do it successfully or not?<\/p>\n

    Tony:<\/strong> Those three are really valid across any job, whether it\u2019s a software-related job, performing some HR function or creating agile code. It\u2019s the same set of circumstances. <\/a>When you\u2019re creating agile code, you want to make sure you perform certain steps quickly and reliably so things don\u2019t go wrong and there are no defects in that code.<\/p>\n

    Accounting for satisfaction<\/h2>\n

    Des:<\/strong> You seem to assign each outcome statement an importance value and a satisfaction value. How do you ascertain that number?<\/p>\n

    Tony:<\/strong> It\u2019s done through statistically valid quantitative research with the customer. It\u2019s not done by our client. We create a survey. It might have 100-150 different outcome statements in it, and we\u2019ve created a way to get all those inputs from customers in a pretty quick period of time. We\u2019ve been using similar techniques for 25 years, so we make it better and better over time.<\/p>\n

    We try to make sure the questionnaires are done in 25-30 minutes, which is fairly lengthy, but we often pay people to take the surveys and have good quality control checks to make sure that people aren\u2019t finishing a 25-minute survey in five minutes. What we\u2019ve discovered is that in most markets, maybe 10 to 15 percent of those taking surveys are fudging their way through the data sets, but they are eliminated so we don\u2019t worry about that. From that good set of data we can figure out which of the needs are important and unsatisfied.<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    I think what you\u2019re referencing is the opportunity algorithm that we created years back. It\u2019s a very simple concept, and it says that a need is unmet if two conditions are met: that need is really important and it\u2019s not well satisfied.<\/p>\n

    Des:<\/strong> I think in most people\u2019s heads, they\u2019ll say, \u201cWell, it must be the difference between satisfaction and importance,\u201d but the calculation is more complex than that. If the job is minimize time to play songs in a certain order, would you survey a lot of potential users or actual users?<\/p>\n

    Tony:<\/strong> Actual users.<\/p>\n

    Des:<\/strong> Would you give them an outcome statement and ask them to rate it? Is that broadly what it is?<\/p>\n

    Tony:<\/strong> Partly. We have to interview users versus nonusers because nonusers aren\u2019t getting the job done, and they may not have the experience to know what\u2019s important and satisfying when getting the job done. The other interesting thing is we ask people what product they are using to get the job done. \u201cDo you own a particular type of MP3 player or are you using a certain streaming service?\u201d We know the answers to that. So then we ask, \u201cUsing X, Y, Z, how satisfied are you with your ability to minimize the time it takes to get the songs in the correct order?\u201d<\/p>\n

    This gives us insight into strengths and weaknesses of different technologies and solutions. That allows you to figure out what steps you must take to catch up to a competitor, but more importantly, you\u2019re looking for opportunities that nobody is addressing. The question there is, \u201cWhat can we do to leapfrog our competitors?\u201d<\/p>\n

    Des:<\/strong> Let\u2019s say our hypothetical outcome statement says, being able to play something in a certain order quickly has an importance of eight, and a satisfaction of four. The na\u00efve thing to do here is eight minus four, but what you\u2019re saying is that there are two conditions and they\u2019re both represented?<\/p>\n

    Tony:<\/strong> That\u2019s right, two conditions. It has to be important, and then relative to its importance, it has to have a low satisfaction. That\u2019s why in the algorithm it’s importance plus the importance-minus-the-satisfaction. It\u2019s got to be important, plus there has to be a big difference between importance and satisfaction. It\u2019s not traditional gap analysis, which has been used forever. People criticize gap analysis and our algorithm, and I think they criticize it because they are so focused on solutions. They think, \u201cWell, what\u2019s the importance of having this solution and what\u2019s your satisfaction with this solution?\u201d<\/p>\n

    We\u2019re not asking that question. People say you\u2019re subtracting apples from oranges. Well, you would be if you were in the solution space, but we\u2019re not in the solution space. We\u2019re in the needs space. We\u2019re asking, \u201cWhen it comes to minimizing the time it takes to get your songs in the right order, how important is that action and how satisfied are you that you can do that given the technology you are using?\u201d Perfectly legitimate questions, and they were saying, \u201cRelative to how important it is that you achieve that goal, how satisfied are you with the ability to do that?\u201d<\/p>\n

    It\u2019s really worked well. We\u2019ve studied it a lot more over the years and discovered that it\u2019s about 93 percent accurate. It\u2019s inaccurate in the midpoints, where you have importance and satisfaction about equal to each other, so we\u2019ve tried to create better methods. We\u2019ve never created anything that\u2019s 100 percent accurate. We\u2019ve gone up to 98 percent, but even at that it gets so complicated that it becomes really hard to explain.<\/p>\n

    <\/a>One of the values of our approach is it\u2019s pretty simply explained. We want to keep it simple but we want to keep it very effective.<\/p>\n

    An irrational purchase still does a job<\/h2>\n

    Des:<\/strong> Are there areas where customers are ill-equipped? Let\u2019s say in the world of luxury goods, it might be trickier for a customer to actually speak truly about why they are spending so much money on a necklace, a jacket, or a car. Do you think there are irrational purchases, and if there are irrational purchases, as in purchases that don\u2019t make logical functional sense, does this method still work in that area?<\/p>\n

    Tony:<\/strong> That\u2019s a great question. I like thinking of that as two separate jobs. People go through the job of purchasing something. Typically, when you go to purchase something, you start considering the functional metrics, the financial metrics, consumption metrics, and the emotional jobs that you are trying to satisfy.<\/p>\n

    You might make an impulse purchase that isn\u2019t really that wise and people would say that\u2019s an emotional decision, and it very well may be. The emotional decision is coming at the point of purchase. That\u2019s very different than how a customer measures value on getting their job done.<\/p>\n

    Even if they made an emotional purchase, once they bring that product home they are going to go use it to get a job done. Are they satisfied with their ability to get the job done using that product? That\u2019s what we are concerned with, and we study both. We study the purchase process and we study the functional metrics people use when getting the job done \u2013 but think about the purchase process as a separate job.<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    Des:<\/strong> Just because people make bad purchasing decisions, that does not therefore mean you should design for and bank on them?<\/p>\n

    Tony:<\/strong> That\u2019s right. That\u2019s a short-term strategy. It might get you a few impulse purchases like the pet rock did. People say that was a fad, and yeah, it was. It satisfied some emotional jobs in the past, but there was no real emotion there. The product doesn\u2019t go on because there\u2019s no real value associated with it.<\/p>\n

    Des:<\/strong> Let\u2019s say all the marketing, all the hype and the amazing sales person got them to make an impulse purchase, and now they\u2019ve bought themselves a car they don\u2019t need. The buyer is still going to evaluate it later based on it being a car, like \u201cWell, this will get me from A to B.\u201d There\u2019s a difference between what feels good to buy and what feels good to use, right?<\/p>\n

    Tony: <\/strong>Exactly, and I think I\u2019ve seen confusion where those lines are blurred. It\u2019s like the argument goes, people make emotional decisions. They might, but that\u2019s in the purchase process. Don\u2019t let that emotional decision affect the way you approach innovation.<\/p>\n

    Des:<\/strong> Take champagne in Las Vegas, for example. They are goods where the purchase is actually your product. The celebration of the purchase is actually more important to the buyer. No one\u2019s taking the ROI of the champagne after they\u2019ve bought it?<\/p>\n

    I\u2019m trying to think of sheer irrational purchases. Sometimes you\u2019ll buy things to be seen purchasing them, and that\u2019s actually what you\u2019re doing it for.<\/p>\n

    Tony:<\/strong> Sure, you see that happen in nightclubs all the time. People are making the wild purchases because they want to be perceived in a certain way.<\/p>\n

    Des:<\/strong> They are probably evaluating it based on that. A bottle of Budweiser will not do the same job as a bottle of Mo\u00ebt & Chandon.<\/p>\n

    <\/a>Tony:<\/strong> That\u2019s right, but they are trying to get a job done. A lot of times, it might not just be emotional; it can be very functional too.<\/p>\n

    The phantom target<\/h2>\n

    Des:<\/strong> One research technique we haven\u2019t talked about yet is personas \u2013 where you create an archetypal user and give them an identity and a scenario in which they encounter your product. The idea is that it will help inform design and product decisions you make. Do you do any of that type of work?<\/p>\n

    Tony:<\/strong> Well, let\u2019s put it in perspective. The question I would ask is, why would you want to create a persona? I think the answer is companies are trying to discover different types of users that might have different unmet needs. If that\u2019s true, then what they are doing is using persona creation as a method for market segmentation. They are going out and observing what appears to them to be different types of users. They\u2019re hypothesizing that because they are different types of users with different demographics and attitudes and so on, they have different unmet needs. This is where it goes wrong, because that\u2019s a bad assumption.<\/p>\n

    Rather than making bad assumptions, what we do is segment the market around the unmet needs, and we can discover segments of customers that struggle more than others to get the job done. I\u2019ll give you a simple example.<\/p>\n

    We did some work for a transportation company and one of the jobs they were focused on was helping business people who have to drive around town to reach their destinations on time. I think we can all relate to this, but some of us go to the same locations every day. We leave at the same time, we know the traffic patterns, we know the backup routes, and we don\u2019t struggle that much to reach our destination on time. But others have to go to different parts of the city, like you did today. You leave at different times, you don\u2019t know the traffic patterns, you don\u2019t know the backup routes, you\u2019re not sure where to park, you don\u2019t know how long it\u2019s going to take from where you park, and because you encounter all these different variables that cause complexity, it\u2019s causing you to be more underserved in getting the job done.<\/p>\n

    This is what we are trying to discover when we segment the market \u2013 are there groups of people that struggle more to get the job done? Rather than creating a persona based on observation, we create them based on statistical data. We segment around the unmet needs and then we say, \u201cOkay, who are your three personas?\u201d It\u2019s a group of people who don\u2019t have to travel to a large variety of locations. They know everything about where they are going to go so they don\u2019t struggle, and they don\u2019t have many unmet needs versus another segment on the other extreme that is experiencing that complete opposite.<\/p>\n

    You could call that a persona, but it\u2019s a statistically valid persona that you could target effectively with a product and a marketing campaign versus a traditional persona, which doesn\u2019t do that.
    \n\"Job
    \nDes:<\/strong> I think the unspoken value of personas is really that it\u2019s a use case to rally a team behind. You put it on a poster, you put it on a wall, and you\u2019re like, \u201cOh, okay, we\u2019re designing for that person.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Tony:<\/strong> It does make it easier to design when you know the segment that you are designing for, but the problem with a traditional persona is that it\u2019s a phantom target. It\u2019s not a real segment; it\u2019s a madeup segment, which is a misleading concept. That\u2019s why we don\u2019t do that. Doing it through statistically valid data and identifying those kinds of segments like I described, you\u2019re creating a persona, but it really exists. If you go after that segment of people who struggle to reach their destination on time, you\u2019ll know who they are, why they struggle, and what their unmet needs are.<\/p>\n

    In the earlier Bosch example, we discovered a segment of carpenters that were underserved. That\u2019s because they encountered some additional variables that added complexities in getting the job done, which is making more finished cuts. That required them to make more changes in the blade height and angle. Because they have to encounter those different variables and add complexity, they are more underserved, and we find that in all different markets.<\/p>\n

    The importance of that can\u2019t be understated, because if you can find the segment of people that are highly underserved, even in an existing market, you can institute a very effective profit share strategy. Think of Nest for example. How many people are crazy enough to spend seven times more for a thermostat? The answer is about 10 percent of the market, but by controlling that 10 percent of the market, they can control over 30 percent of the profit share in that space, which is great.<\/p>\n

    Apple is the master of this. They have 20 percent market share and 90 percent profit share. That\u2019s unheard of, but it’s the general goal. If there is a segment of people that are highly under-served and willing to pay more, then that makes a really fine target.<\/p>\n

    I\u2019m going to mention one more thing. For about five years we\u2019ve been trying to correlate willingness to pay with unmet needs. It makes sense that it does correlate, but what we were trying to figure out and answer specifically is, which unmet needs will people pay most for? We were always asked this question: here are the 15 unmet needs, will people pay for it? If so, how much, and which of those needs are really driving their willingness to pay?<\/p>\n

    It took us about five years to figure this out, but we\u2019ve been executing that pretty effectively this year and we\u2019re really excited about that. <\/a>That\u2019s one of the newer additions to the approach. We haven\u2019t written anything on it yet, but I did want to share with you.<\/p>\n

    Needs: A case by case basis<\/h2>\n

    Des:<\/strong> Back to the example of business people trying to get to the right place in time. Today I\u2019m going somewhere I\u2019ve never been before. Compared to a regular trip, I don\u2019t know the area and I don\u2019t know the neighborhood so I don\u2019t know how long to budget. I don\u2019t know if I could pull up outside or any of those sorts of things. But most days I’m doing a regular trip. That would imply that I have different needs based on different scenarios.<\/p>\n

    Tony:<\/strong> That\u2019s correct; they are different cases.<\/p>\n

    Des:<\/strong> Would part of the research be to talk through case by case? Does the same need exist in all cases?<\/p>\n

    Tony:<\/strong> That\u2019s exactly what we do. As an example, think of a surgical case. When we do work with medical companies on surgery, we ask the surgeon to think about their last case, and then we ask them to describe that case to us: what was the patient type, comorbidities, what situation did they find themself in. Then when we go through and ask them the importance and satisfaction related to that case. What that allows us to do is segment the market around varying cases, if the case itself is causing variability in getting the job done.<\/p>\n

    Des: <\/strong>That makes total sense. If a lot of people said that something\u2019s importance is 1 out of 10 and a lot of people say it\u2019s 10 out of 10, do you end up in a world where you\u2019re describing it as 5 even though that represents no one?<\/p>\n

    Tony:<\/strong> If you took all the data together, that would be a problem. When we get our data back, we ignore the broad market view because to us it\u2019s meaningless for the exact reason you describe. This is why we segment the market. Before we do anything, we segment the market to see, are there different groups of people with different unmet needs? Those who rated everything 10, they\u2019re over here and those who rated it 1 are over here. Now we can analyze them separately and say, \u201cWhy did that group rate it a 1? Oh, because they go to the same location everyday and they don\u2019t struggle versus the 10, who are struggling.\u201d<\/p>\n

    This is why segmentation is so critical. Not everyone struggles in the same way to get a job done. If you just assume a market is homogeneous, you\u2019re making a big mistake. Just like in the case with the circular saw. I can give you 1,000 cases, but it\u2019s always the same scenario. That\u2019s why we just ignore the total market.<\/p>\n

    There might be an instance where the total market was purely homogeneous. In other words, after we segmented the market, all the segments are clustered in the same location.<\/a> Then you could actually do a broad strategy across the entire market and be successful with every customer. We\u2019ve never seen that, but theoretically it\u2019s possible.<\/p>\n

    Messaging: The ultimate differentiator<\/h2>\n

    Des:<\/strong> To go through it from the start, it\u2019s the job map, identifying needs, researching needs, segmenting by case, identifying opportunity and then lastly, designing a solution \u2013 and I presume you can use this for marketing as well?<\/p>\n

    Tony:<\/strong> Yeah, there\u2019s really two main uses of the data. One is to create the market sales strategy and the other is to create the product strategy. When we think about the product strategy, we typically go through a protocol that says, \u201cBefore you invent anything, let\u2019s exhaust the other possibilities.\u201d One possibility is your product already does the job; you just didn\u2019t message around that. You just need to tell people, and we\u2019ve seen a few situations like that.<\/p>\n

    The first occurrence of that was back in \u201994-95 with Cordis Corporation, who was making angioplasty balloons. They had one percent market share. We discovered they were satisfying about five unmet needs better than anybody, and so they revamped their marketing and messaging, armed their salespeople with the right message, and they increased their market share from one to five percent in six months\u2026just by telling people.<\/p>\n

    We have another great story too, a more recent one with Arm & Hammer\u2019s Animal Nutrition Group. We\u2019ve worked with them since late 2013. They revamped their sales and marketing activities in 2014 and generated a 30 percent year-to-year revenue growth, which was fantastic. They did it without changing their product and without changing the pricing. It\u2019s all based on aligning what you\u2019re doing with the needs of customers. In their case it\u2019s dairy nutrition, so they were focused on cow health and cow nutrition, but dairy men are more focused on optimizing their productivity. They go through this very extensive job to do that, and healthy cows is critically important to part of that.<\/p>\n

    Knowing that and knowing how they could contribute to getting the bigger part of the job done helped them generate some additional revenue growth.<\/p>\n

    Des:<\/strong> That’s awesome. I think a lot of our listeners would love to be told that they don\u2019t have to change their product or change their revenue.<\/p>\n

    Tony:<\/strong> We can\u2019t promise that but it\u2019s possible, sure.<\/p>\n

    \n

    Our fourth book, Intercom on Jobs-to-be-Done<\/a><\/em>, is a collection of our best thoughts and ideas on the topic. The goal: help you understand what needs customers meet with your product, and how to ultimately improve upon that experience.<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The founder of innovation consulting firm Strategyn, he\u2019s helped hundreds of companies create new goods and services using JTBD principles, as well as his Outcome-Driven Innovation process. The latter is chronicled in Tony\u2019s best-selling book What…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":28218,"template":"","category":[5],"tags":[175,26,70,327],"show-category":[],"coauthors":[348],"class_list":["post-8475","intercom-podcast","type-intercom-podcast","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-product-and-design","tag-business","tag-jobs-to-be-done","tag-marketing","tag-podcast"],"yoast_head":"\nStrategyn's Tony Ulwick on Jobs-to-be-Done - The Intercom Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Tony Ulwick, who has helped hundreds of companies create new products, discusses how to identify and map the jobs-to-be-done your product addresses.\u00a0\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/podcasts\/podcast-tony-ulwick-on-jobs-to-be-done\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Strategyn's Tony Ulwick on Jobs-to-be-Done\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Tony Ulwick, who has helped hundreds of companies create new products, discusses how to identify and map the jobs-to-be-done your product addresses.\u00a0\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/podcasts\/podcast-tony-ulwick-on-jobs-to-be-done\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Intercom Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/intercominc\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-10-20T21:03:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/template-3-blog-hero.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1968\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"921\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@intercom\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"33 minutes\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"Des Traynor\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.intercom.com\\\/blog\\\/podcasts\\\/podcast-tony-ulwick-on-jobs-to-be-done\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.intercom.com\\\/blog\\\/podcasts\\\/podcast-tony-ulwick-on-jobs-to-be-done\\\/\",\"name\":\"Strategyn's Tony Ulwick on Jobs-to-be-Done - 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