Jobs To Be Done — a working resource collection

I have absolutely come to love this, and use it regularly to evaluate business ideas, investments and even help fellow Founders use it. Clayton Christensen and his team have bestowed this wonderful gift to anyone involved in strategic thinking work.

Listed below are all the useful ways in which you can learn about this and start using it, collected from a bunch of sources around the web.

Start here: the original article on the HBR website — Jobs To Be Done (HBR).

When we buy a product, we essentially “hire” it to help us do a job. If it does the job well, the next time we’re confronted with the same job, we tend to hire that product again. And if it does a crummy job, we “fire” it and look for an alternative.

— Clayton Christensen

The book: Competing Against Luck (2016)

Jobs To Be Done guidance

1. Jobs are not the same as your mission, vision or goals.
2. Jobs describe the underlying human needs, not the features of the product.
3. Jobs illuminate consumer insights on underlying motivations and struggles, not business objectives.
4. Importantly, a job should highlight a promising specific market opportunity about an unmet need — balancing between too broad or too niche.

Other interesting articles

• What Customers Want from Your Products (HBS Working Knowledge)

Go out and build great things. And remember — Competing Against Luck.