Avoid Those Half-Baked Ideas with the Jobs-to-be-Done Framework for Innovation
This is a story about needs and jobs-to-be-done, but it’s really about baking soda.
Maybe it’s the researcher in us. Maybe it’s because we’re all at home. But we often stare into our kitchen cupboards.
What’s always looking back? Baking soda. Job-to-be-done? Help you bake stuff – like cookies!
But we all know it does so much more than just help you bake. Need to treat heartburn? Baking soda. Want to improve your exercise performance? Baking soda. Need to kill weeds? Baking soda. And so inexpensive!
We want you to think about needs and JTBD work like baking soda – a versatile, cost-effective, can-do problem solver for your business. Do not underestimate it. Do not nod your head and think Jobs ID is only for new product innovation. It can do so much more! It’s an innovation framework for services, marketing programs, advertising, and communication strategy.
And just as baking soda can work in the garden as easily as the kitchen, getting to those macro needs and those next-level Jobs can work across industries. It’s worked for Starbucks as easily as Wells Fargo. It can work for you.
Here’s the quick backstory on jobs-to-be-done
It’s based on consumer behavior and is a well-regarded and often used framework for innovation. Coined and made popular by late Harvard professor and author, Clayton Christensen, Jobs to be Done Theory (JTBD) is anchored in the idea that people don’t just buy products and services. Rather, they “hire” something with certain functional, emotional, and even social elements to help them make progress or solve a problem. They hire for a specific job. Totally makes sense, right? We think so and we love it.
Let’s look at a few problems the JTBD framework can solve for you.
Do you want to improve your innovation? JTBD delivers the “baked” goods.
When we think about needs and jobs it’s very much grounded in a framework for innovation to help teams. To put structure around the white space. To find the need. It’s the basic foundation. It’s the baking part of baking soda. It’s a way to make sense of something that can be very nebulous. “We need to bring innovation to the market. Where do we begin?” Needs and Jobs provides that structure of where to begin and how to move forward to get something that’ll be successful.
The framing structure prevents you from attempting to boil the ocean. Many needs and jobs may apply to your category or brand, but many may not. We always start by framing the context of our jobs exploration. Thinking in terms of concentric circles, we start with close-in category scenarios and the immediate competitive set, then we go out from there to think through other possible, but lesser considered situations where your products may be hired. You may compete with other things that you don’t always consider as your competitors. It takes skill to walk the line between being too narrow and avoiding going too broad. We help guide the framing process.
Side note about Jobs
Progress is a critical component of jobs. Jobs are based on the progress that consumers want to make within a specific area, their lives, considering different contexts or situations.
Could you use help with prioritization? JTBD can help you strategize and get out of the weeds.
Within the macro-needs landscape, you have many jobs-to-be-done so there’s ultimately a lot that you can identify. Part of what makes our approach to Needs and Jobs work really useful is that we don’t just identify the needs and JTBD but we also help you think through how to prioritize them, and ultimately where to invest your resources.
Prioritization is where our qual/quant approach comes into play for you. We first explore and find consumer needs (the top-of-mind and easily accessed ones as well as those latent and less clear). We dig deeply into consumer behaviors and situations where they experience needs and seek candidates to hire. This allows us to identity the jobs via qualitative discovery. Once we amass and map these jobs, providing rich texture around the problem and/or progress desired, we next filter and prioritize. Through robust quantitative evaluation and some easy-to-understand choice modeling, we gain insight into job relevance, satisfaction with current job solutions as well as where and how your brand (and your competitors) are delivering and fitting. Are some jobs less relevant than others? Are there solutions out there that are already fulfilling a particular need or job?
For example, you might have a highly relevant consumer set of jobs-to-be-done. But through quantitative assessment and analysis we may say, “Gosh, amongst some of these jobs there are already a number of ‘hires’ that are satisfying consumers.” So, it’s highly relevant but it’s already being well-satisfied. Therefore, it may not be the best place to invest as the cost to enter and differentiate, to steal share from competitor products, may be too great relative to the potential pay-off. Strategically, it may be a better play to first look at those highly relevant yet under-satisfied jobs where consumers are eager for a new candidate.
With the addition of our survey phase, the jobs map suddenly becomes like a chess board where each potential move is considered to maximize innovation dollars and resources. Reducing it down to its essence, it becomes an exercise in where to invest and place your bets. Do you take on the uphill battle against well performing or highly regarded competitors? Or do you seek the low hanging fruit where your brand is seen as a fit and others are not dominating the scene?
We can also find jobs that are not super relevant. Consumers may not have a good solution to a need and your brand might be a good fit, but if the job isn’t highly relevant, do you want to go there? Maybe so, maybe not. This is where it can start to feel like a game of chess. The strategy would be to go into that space because it wouldn’t take much of an investment. The marketing angle would be, “You didn’t know that you needed this, but you really do, and we’ve got the solution for you.” That’s the strategy and prioritization piece of Needs and JTBD. It’s bringing together the deep discovery, the measurement data, the competitive context and the brand goals and organizational capabilities.
Consumers are hiring for NEW jobs, right now.
Given the dynamics in the world right now we know needs have changed. Consumers are hiring for new jobs! As a thought exercise, let’s see how many new jobs have been created around the commute to work. Consumers have shifted from commuting and going into an office to working from home. Suddenly, they have home office needs - from Zoom lighting to small desks that can fit into closets. They have different breakfast and lunch needs. No more on-the-go granola bars. They aren’t driving as much and that affects their insurance needs. We could go on, but the point is that new jobs are being created right now, as you read this article. Getting a snapshot of consumer needs and JTBD is a smart move.
Do you need to design a communication strategy or new service offering? Improve performance with JTBD.
How do you think about the needs, wants, aspirations, and progress that people want to make, see, and feel from a brand? How do you then translate that into messaging? Needs and Jobs work is a fantastic way to understand what you can uniquely deliver. For this, we only have to shift our JTBD application away from a product or service to buy and into a message to be received and communication designed to motivate.
We recently applied the Jobs theory and approach to a communication strategy challenge for a large brand in the financial services space. The context and guardrails were established as needs, wants, pain points and progress a customer seeks within their money management and finances. What does that look like? Where are they and where do they want to be? And, most importantly, what do they want to see, hear, and feel from their partners? This was where we started and where we found those bigger needs and those specific jobs. From there, we engaged our client and their agency partners to review and prioritize by layering on the elements of brand strategy, customer target, key competitors and yes, even, brand fit and believability. We landed on ONE BIG IDEA so they knew exactly where to go next and what language, imagery, associations, and contexts to include. What is it? Well, we can’t say just yet, but we anticipate a new and exciting ad and promotion campaign from them in the near future.
Ultimately, it’s not just about understanding your consumer’s needs, it’s about understanding how their needs connect to the marketplace dynamics and the competitive landscape and knowing where you have permission to go.
You needn’t buy in to unnecessarily complex or pricey solutions to solve your prioritization, innovation, or communication strategy needs. Remember, Jobs-to-be-Done is the baking soda of the insights world – versatile and highly effective.
To talk Needs and Jobs, Contact Lisa Osborne at lisa@ignite-360.com. She will also happily share her recipe for her latest favorite baked treat, a killer raspberry chocolate tart.
To gain a deeper understanding of the jobs consumers are hiring for right now, watch our 3 part video series:
GRATITUDE: THE CHANGE PEOPLE REALLY WANT
