What is the Jobs To Be Done methodology?
Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2025 5:10 am
Jobs to be Done is a methodology to better understand consumer behavior by changing perspectives with the aim of making marketing actions more efficient and innovation more predictable and profitable.
It works like a lens through which we look at the competition and consumers differently, focusing on the needs of customers. With that point of view, we don't seek to understand what the public wants to buy: what matters is what they want to solve.
This perspective understands that people do not buy with the product thailand phone data in mind, but rather buy it to help solve something. "Jobs to be done," therefore, are life situations that consumers want to change.
Does an athlete need more motivation to run? Then he or she buys a special shoe for that purpose.
Does a couple need to get to know each other better? A dinner at a restaurant helps a lot.
A family wants more stability? Buy your own home.
And there it goes.
In general, all tasks that people need to perform (or jobs they need to solve) have a functional, social or emotional dimension .
Running shoes, for example, are objectively designed to fit the foot and run. However, a person may buy them to solve an emotional issue: the motivation that a pair of professional shoes provokes.
It is up to companies, then, to identify what their audience's motivating factors are and how products and services can help solve them. By doing this, they have a better chance of creating solutions that will succeed in the market.
Where did it come from?
The concept of Jobs to be Done was popularized by Clayton Christensen, known for his studies on innovation and professor of management at Harvard Business School. His first book, "The Innovator's Dilemma" (1997), became a classic.
Intrigued by the question of innovation, Christensen questioned in the book why some large companies failed to launch new products on the market that did not meet consumer expectations.
Based on these reflections, the author wrote an article for the Harvard Business Review in 2005 called " Marketing Malpractice: The Cause and the Cure ."
The text begins by saying that 30,000 new products are launched every year. Companies invest heavily in research and technology, but more than 90% of these launches fail in the market. A new model is needed.
Based on this, it offers us a new perspective to rethink market segmentation and innovation.
The proposition is simple: just look at it from the customer's point of view and understand that they just want to get something done in their life. When people know that "a job needs to be done" (get a job done), they "hire" products or services to get it done.
The task of the marketer, therefore, is to understand what jobs periodically arise in the lives of their customers and, based on that, design products and experiences that serve to solve them. That is why this theory began to be called " Jobs to be done ".
It works like a lens through which we look at the competition and consumers differently, focusing on the needs of customers. With that point of view, we don't seek to understand what the public wants to buy: what matters is what they want to solve.
This perspective understands that people do not buy with the product thailand phone data in mind, but rather buy it to help solve something. "Jobs to be done," therefore, are life situations that consumers want to change.
Does an athlete need more motivation to run? Then he or she buys a special shoe for that purpose.
Does a couple need to get to know each other better? A dinner at a restaurant helps a lot.
A family wants more stability? Buy your own home.
And there it goes.
In general, all tasks that people need to perform (or jobs they need to solve) have a functional, social or emotional dimension .
Running shoes, for example, are objectively designed to fit the foot and run. However, a person may buy them to solve an emotional issue: the motivation that a pair of professional shoes provokes.
It is up to companies, then, to identify what their audience's motivating factors are and how products and services can help solve them. By doing this, they have a better chance of creating solutions that will succeed in the market.
Where did it come from?
The concept of Jobs to be Done was popularized by Clayton Christensen, known for his studies on innovation and professor of management at Harvard Business School. His first book, "The Innovator's Dilemma" (1997), became a classic.
Intrigued by the question of innovation, Christensen questioned in the book why some large companies failed to launch new products on the market that did not meet consumer expectations.
Based on these reflections, the author wrote an article for the Harvard Business Review in 2005 called " Marketing Malpractice: The Cause and the Cure ."
The text begins by saying that 30,000 new products are launched every year. Companies invest heavily in research and technology, but more than 90% of these launches fail in the market. A new model is needed.
Based on this, it offers us a new perspective to rethink market segmentation and innovation.
The proposition is simple: just look at it from the customer's point of view and understand that they just want to get something done in their life. When people know that "a job needs to be done" (get a job done), they "hire" products or services to get it done.
The task of the marketer, therefore, is to understand what jobs periodically arise in the lives of their customers and, based on that, design products and experiences that serve to solve them. That is why this theory began to be called " Jobs to be done ".