Jobs to Be Done

A method that defines demand by the progress a customer is trying to make, rather than by product category or customer profile.

Ulwick's outcome-driven work from 1991, HBR 2002; named by Christensen (2003)

What it does

Defines the job a customer hires the product to do. Widens competition from the category to anything that gets the same job done, and turns feature debates into outcome debates.

When it breaks

In low-involvement, habitual purchases it degenerates into inventing a job that was never there. Not every purchase has a purpose behind it.

Case

Cordis Corp. ran outcome-driven interviews with cardiologists from 1991, went from under 1% of the angioplasty balloon market to over 20%, and grew revenue from $223m to $443m before J&J acquired it in 1996. The figures are Strategyn's own — vendor-reported, not independent.

Strategyn — Cordis case study ↗

Diagram — not yet drawn

One job statement in the centre; radiating out, the non-obvious set of things currently hired to do it, only one of which is a category competitor.

In the wild

Unvetted · not part of the tier assessment

What has been written about this tool in the last twelve months. Machine-retrieved and unchecked — everything above this line was checked.

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