Jobs to Be Done

A Roadmap for Customer-Centered Innovation

By: Stephen Wunker, David Farber, Jessica Wattman

Narrated by: Tim Andres Pabon

Length: 4 hrs and 52 mins

Publisher's summary

In a challenging economy filled with nimble competitors, no one can afford to stagnate. Yet innovation is notoriously difficult. Only one in 100 new products is successful enough to cover development costs, and even fewer impact a company's growth trajectory. So how do you pinpoint the winning ideas that customers will love?

Sifting through purchasing data for clues about what might sell and haphazardly brainstorming ideas are typical strategies. But Jobs to Be Done offers a far more precise and effective approach: determining the drivers of customer behavior - those functional and emotional goals that people want to achieve. Using the Jobs method, it becomes easy to see that people don't really need a quarter-inch drill bit but a quarter-inch hole. They're not buying just ice cream but also celebration, bonding, and indulgence. This simple shift in perspective opens up new insights about your customers and a wealth of hidden opportunities. Social media newcomer Snapchat, for example, used the Jobs process to capture the millennial demographic. By reducing functionality, the company satisfied its users' unmet need to document real life in the moment, without filters and "like" buttons.

Packed with similar examples from every industry, this complete innovation guide explains both foundational concepts and a detailed action plan developed by innovation expert Stephen Wunker and his team. From unlocking customer insights to ideation to iteration, you'll learn how to:

• Figure out what customers really want, even if they can't express it
• Sort out valuable insights from less useful customer data
• Dig into the underlying "why" of consumer behavior, not just the "what"
• Target unaddressed jobs to be done that have the power to disrupt
• Identify key customer segments you didn't know existed
• Develop solutions that work with ingrained habits, not against them
• Use a Jobs-based lens to get a broader view of the competition
• Generate better ideas in brainstorming sessions and vet your solutions
• Sidestep common mistakes, such as engaging in "feature wars"
• Spot emerging trends that are changing how customers will behave
• Work customer insights into the design process
• And much more

Jobs to Be Done gives you a clear-cut framework for thinking about your business, outlines a road map for discovering new markets, new products, and new services, and helps you generate creative opportunities to innovate your way to success.

©2016 Stephen Wunker, Jessica Wattman; David Farber (P)2016 Gildan Media LLC

Excellent introduction to the topic - but with a slight side note

This was an excellent introduction to an interesting topic. Book was clear and structure helped following the narrative.

I just wish that creators would have applied their own principles and considered what "jobs" listener is trying to get done.

As this is audio book with much to offer I found myself adding notes and creating checklists that could have been provided by creators as pdf-file. This is fortunately quite common nowadays and would have suited particularly well for this kind of book.

Still I enjoyed the book and found it helpful.

YouTube talks are better.

After listening to YouTube talks on JTBD, I bought this book hoping for deeper insight.
This does describe JTBD, but doesn't offer any further help for practitioners (except well known interview & brainstorming methods)