Define Markets Around the Customer’s Job-To-Be-Done Anthony

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Tony Ulwick is the pioneer of jobs-to-be-done theory, the inventor of the Outcome-Driven Innovation® (ODI) process, and the founder of the strategy and innovation consulting firm Strategyn. He is the Latest Mailing Database author of Jobs to be Done : Theory to Practice (IDEA BITE PRESS) and “What Customers Want” (McGraw-Hill) and numerous articles in Harvard Business Review and Sloan Management Review. Companies often define the markets they serve around the technology in their product offerings… a technology that one day will become obsolete. Clearly, this is a mistake, but it's one that has been repeated by hundreds of companies over the decades. Where are the companies that defined themselves around CDs?

They spiraled to their death when MP3 technology came along. Many companies today find themselves in this same situation. Define your markets around the customer's job-to-be-done A market, which is the target of everything a company does, should not be defined around something so unstable that it is only valid until the next product iteration. It should be defined around something that is stable for decades, making long-term strategic investments more attractive and providing the company with a vision for the future.


This is why the Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI) process defines a market around the customer's “job-to-be -done.” More specifically, we define a market as “a group of people and the job they are trying to get done.” Parents (a group of people) who are trying to pass on life lessons to their children (the job- to-be-done) constitute a market. Dental hygienists who clean patients' teeth and farmers who grow a crop also constitute markets.When defined in this way, there are tens of thousands of markets out there, and many of them have been around for decades, even centuries