Source: Clay Christensen, Harvard Business Review
Published: September 2016

Jobs to Be Done Theory

Circulated: June 5, 2019

To create offerings that people truly want to buy, firms need to hone in on the job the customer is trying to get done. When we buy a product, we essentially “hire” it to help us do a job. If it does the job well, we’ll hire it again. If it does a crummy job, we “fire” it and look for something else to solve the problem.

The key to successful innovation is identifying jobs that are poorly performed in customers’ lives and then designing products, experiences, and processes around those jobs.