What is the main message of Jobs to Be Done?

Discovering and satisfying customers' needs and desires is crucial for successful innovation.

How long does it take to read Jobs to Be Done?

The reading time for Jobs to Be Done varies depending on the reader's speed. However, the Blinkist summary can be read in just 15 minutes.

Marketing & Sales

Jobs to Be Done Book Summary - Jobs to Be Done Book explained in key points

Listen to the Intro

00:00

Jobs to Be Done summary

Name: Jobs to Be Done
Rating: 4.1 (44 reviews)
Author: Stephen Wunker, Jessica Wattman & David Farber

Stephen Wunker Jessica Wattman David Farber

A Roadmap for Customer-Centered Innovation

4.1 (44 ratings)

15 mins

Brief summary

Jobs to Be Done by Stephen Wunker, Jessica Wattman, and David Farber is a business book that explores the theory of jobs to be done, providing valuable insights on how to create products and services that truly meet customers' needs and solve their problems.

Topics

Strategy Product Management Entrepreneurship Marketing Leadership Innovation

Table of Contents

Jobs to Be Done
Summary of 6 key ideas

Audio & text in the Blinkist app

Key idea 1 of 6

What’s in it for me? Learn how to make products and services that customers actually want.

The concepts we’re about to get into, which is sometimes referred to as the “Jobs to be Done methodology,” aren’t new ones. This framework was developed by the popular Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen. Christensen had a lot of experience serving on boards of directors of various companies, as well as being a CEO. His experience taught him a lot about the power of disruptive innovation, which is woven into the principles of Jobs to Be Done.

In the sections that follow, we’ll see how the “jobs'' in question pertain to the daily tasks that customers are trying to get done. By focusing on these jobs, companies can uncover innovative opportunities, and even avoid the pitfalls that many fall into. In short, we’ll look at the benefits of asking “Why?” and digging deeper into the realm of customer behavior to find exciting solutions and new possibilities for growth and disruption.

Helping customers do their jobs

Every company hopes to innovate, but the question always is, how? The Jobs-based approach aims to provide you with a roadmap full of actionable steps you can take to generate truly innovative ideas.

The jobs approach is a customer-centric approach. It’s all about taking a deeper look at customer behavior to identify the latent opportunities in the market. It’s asking, What jobs are customers trying to accomplish with the products they buy, and why are they doing these jobs? With this perspective, you can also identify the pain points related to current solutions and guide your businesses toward profitability.

While it helps to reach out to potential customers and ask questions, sometimes customers might not fully understand what they want or why they want it. Surprisingly, this knowledge gap can be a source of innovation and growth. So you need to ask the right questions. When you delve into the “why” behind people's actions, you can uncover the emotional, psychological, and practical factors that drive their choices.

Understanding the jobs that people are trying to get done is crucial to predicting which products or services they'll embrace. Breakthroughs come from reimagining problems, not just offering slightly improved solutions to existing challenges. Designing a product that simply adds a new feature to something that already exists is neither innovative nor a path to long-term growth.

It’s also important to look beyond the products that people are currently using to get their jobs done. When you focus on the job itself, you can begin to rethink the solution completely. Think of it this way: When someone goes to the hardware store, they don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill; they want to make a quarter-inch hole.

The more specific you get, the better. And when you carefully walk through every step of the job, you can uncover the emotional components of the job as well.

Take Beats Electronics, for example. Quality-wise, their headphones are inferior to other brands. So, if the only part of the job were sound quality, customers would look elsewhere. But when they were first released, Beats headphones also satisfied an emotional need. They were stylish; they gave customers a seat with the cool kids in the cafeteria. That was something other headphones weren’t doing.

Designing products that excel in functional jobs and appeal to emotional needs is a winning strategy. Once you develop an understanding of customer jobs, you’ll be on the path to gaining insights that will guide the development of products, services, and business models that truly meet people's needs. We’ll dig deeper into this process in the sections ahead.

What’s driving the job?

Once you know that the first step is to focus on customer jobs, you can start to dissect those jobs in order to understand what’s really driving them. The concept of "job drivers" is crucial as it can lead to all kinds of possibilities for growth and innovation.

Job drivers are the hidden contextual elements that influence the importance of specific jobs in a customer's life. Consider the successful gym franchise, Planet Fitness. They looked at job drivers and discovered that there was an underserved market for customers who wanted a non-intimidating gym environment that didn’t cost too much. Along with low, flexible membership rates, they offered food benefits like Pizza Mondays and Bagel Tuesdays. These considerations are driven by the job drivers of their customers, leading to successful targeting and customer satisfaction.

Processing the pain points

When you dig into customer jobs, you can uncover even more important factors, like the pain points they’re currently coping with, as well as additional stakeholders who can be easily overlooked. These insights expand the space for both incremental and breakthrough innovations.

Identifying key stakeholders beyond the product purchaser is vital. A good way of doing this is to create a process map from the customer's perspective. This breaks down the job from when they begin thinking about doing it right through to when it's satisfied. This will help uncover the key players – like partners, kids, roommates, or even beloved pets – and their influence on defining the jobs.

Measuring success and avoiding roadblocks

Is a win for your company really a win for the customer? Success in product development is often elusive and not easily predicted. However, companies that excel in understanding and satisfying the right jobs – and alleviating the right pain points – tend to have the greatest success. This means honing in on contexts that matter to customers and understanding their true motivations.

Beyond just satisfying jobs, it's crucial to comprehend how customers want to satisfy those jobs. It's not always about more; it's about understanding what customers want more of, what they want less of, and where they seek balance.

Pricing and value

In this section we’re going to talk about value. This is about translating the insights you’ve gained through customer research and turning them into value for the customer and revenue for your business.

To start with, let’s consider the Hershey brand. In the early 1980s, Hershey was losing a lot of ground to its competitors. But when it started taking a closer look at its customers, it had the revelation that adults, not children, were the primary consumers of candy. With this knowledge, Hershey began to design confections that addressed the emotional needs of this demographic. This strategic shift allowed Hershey to regain its position as a confection leader and expand the candy market.

Better brainstorming

Let’s say that you’ve conducted a broad range of customer research and drawn up your process maps to identify all the stakeholders and pain points. You might be ready to put your heads together and come up with some great ideas. So let’s look at some of the dos and don’ts of brainstorming.

Right off the bat, it’s important to know that boss-led brainstorming is often fruitless. Team members tend to be intimidated, and so they’ll propose safe and uninspired ideas, fearing that bold concepts won't be appreciated. This early influx of uninspired ideas tends to dominate discussions.

Want to see all full key ideas from Jobs to Be Done?

Key ideas in Jobs to Be Done

More knowledge in less time

Read or listen

Get the key ideas from nonfiction bestsellers in minutes, not hours.

Find your next read

Get book lists curated by experts and personalized recommendations.

Shortcasts ^New

We’ve teamed up with podcast creators to bring you key insights from podcasts.

What is Jobs to Be Done about?

Jobs to Be Done (2016) offers an up-to-date look at one of the most respected strategies for creating sought-after, innovative products. This methodology is laser-focused on customer research and understanding what they need in order to get jobs done.

Jobs to Be Done Review

Jobs to Be Done (2016) explores a revolutionary framework for understanding customer needs and designing successful products. Here's why this book is worth reading:

It offers a practical toolkit for uncovering customers' true motivations, helping businesses create products that customers truly want.
The book provides real-world case studies that demonstrate the power of the Jobs-to-Be-Done approach in driving innovation and achieving business success.
With its fresh perspective on customer research and problem-solving, it challenges traditional thinking and inspires new ways of approaching product development.

Who should read Jobs to Be Done?

CEOs looking for new ideas
Marketing and design fanatics
Research and development teams

About the Author

Stephen Wunker is an accomplished author known for his expertise in customer-centered innovation and jobs-to-be-done theory. With a background in consulting and strategy, he has shared his insights through books and articles, helping businesses prioritize customer needs in their innovation processes.

Jessica Wattman has a PhD in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As the director of social innovation at New Markets Advisors, she has extensive experience in researching unstable environments around the world and finding innovative solutions.

David Farber is a manager at New Markets Advisors and a specialist at using Jobs-based research in helping companies around the globe find new opportunities for growth and innovation.

Categories with Jobs to Be Done

Marketing & Sales Management & Leadership Entrepreneurship Productivity

Book summaries like Jobs to Be Done

Competing Against Luck

Clayton M. Christensen

The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice

Why So Many Leaders Abdicate Their Most Important Responsibilities

A Business Fable About Shedding The Three Fears That Sabotage Client Loyalty

9 min

4.4

The Stranger in the Woods

Michael Finkel

The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit

13 min

4.3

Blitzscaling

Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh

The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies

Discover Your Chronotype – and the Best Time to Eat Lunch, Ask for a Raise, Have Sex, Write a Novel, Take Your Meds, and More

17 min

3.1

Playing to Win

A.G. Lafley & Roger L. Martin

How Strategy Really Works

8 min

3.6

Financial Intelligence

Karen Berman & Joe Knigh with John Case

A Manager's Guide to Knowing What the Numbers Really Mean

9 min

3.7

Emotional Intelligence

Continuous Discovery Habits

Teresa Torres

Discover Products that Create Customer Value and Business Value

The New Workday Standard of Creating More by Working Less

Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business

An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs

20 min

4.4

80/20 Sales and Marketing

Perry Marshall

The Definitive Guide to Working Less and Making More

Make Easier Decisions, Stop Second-Guessing, and Bring More Joy to Your Life

20 min

4.5

Ogilvy on Advertising

David Ogilvy

Discover the Coveted Secrets of Advertising Genius David Ogilvy

16 min

3.9

The Win Without Pitching Manifesto

Blair Enns

Master the Art of Selling Ideas Effortlessly

The Extensions of Man

17 min

4.3

Can We Talk?

Roberta Chinsky Matuson

Seven Principles for Managing Difficult Conversations at Work

How to Craft a Story to Stand Out and Win

17 min

3.9

The Design Thinking Workbook

CJ Meadows

Essential Skills for Creativity and Business Growth

16 min

4.5

The ONE Thing

Gary Keller and Jay Papasan

The surprisingly simple truth behind extraordinary results

Journey Through Elon Musk’s Visionary Mind

How to Get the Most Out of Your Life

18 min

4.5

My Morning Routine

Benjamin Spall and Michael Xander

How Successful People Start Every Day Inspired

Keeping It Real in a World Obsessed with Being Happy

22 min

4.4

Bulletproof Problem Solving

Charles Conn and Robert McLean

The One Skill That Changes Everything

The Psychology of Persuasion

Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Entrepreneurship

19 min

4.2

The 1-Page Marketing Plan

Allan Dib

Get New Customers, Make More Money, And Stand Out From The Crowd

Say Less to Get More from Any Pitch or Presentation

27 min

4.5

The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask About Your Organization

Peter F. Drucker

Revitalize your business with these five questions

The Architecture of Belief

26 min

4.6

A Short History of Nearly Everything

Bill Bryson

A journey into the most intriguing and intractable questions that science seeks to answer

The Life of Gordon Moore, Silicon Valley’s Quiet Revolutionary

Tales of Life and Music

The Hidden Driver of Excellence

26 min

4.3

The Eight Essential People Skills for Project Management

Zachary Wong

Solving the Most Common People Problems for Team Leaders

How to Get As Many Clients, Customers and Sales As You Can Possibly Handle

The 33 Laws of Business and Life

17 min

4.3

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Friedrich Nietzsche

The Classic That Will Challenge Everything You Know

366 Meditations on Power, Seduction, Mastery, Strategy, and Human Nature

30 min

4.5

Flow

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The Psychology of Optimal Experience

23 min

4.4

Human + Machine

Paul R. Daugherty & H. James Wilson

Reimagining Work in the Age of AI

A Short Guide to Remove Distractions and Get Your Brain to Do Hard Things

21 min

4.3

The Little Book of Common Sense Investing

John C. Bogle

The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns

12 min

4.3

How to Be Your Own Therapist

Owen O'Kane

Boost Your Mood and Reduce Your Anxiety in 10 Minutes a Day

19 min

4.4

People ❤️ Blinkist

Sven O.

It's highly addictive to get core insights on personally relevant topics without repetition or triviality. Added to that the apps ability to suggest kindred interests opens up a foundation of knowledge.

Thi Viet Quynh N.

Great app. Good selection of book summaries you can read or listen to while commuting. Instead of scrolling through your social media news feed, this is a much better way to spend your spare time in my opinion.

Jonathan A.

Life changing. The concept of being able to grasp a book's main point in such a short time truly opens multiple opportunities to grow every area of your life at a faster rate.

Renee D.

Great app. Addicting. Perfect for wait times, morning coffee, evening before bed. Extremely well written, thorough, easy to use.