Popularized by Clayton M. Christensen (The Innovator's Solution, 2003; Competing Against Luck, 2016) and developed as outcome-driven innovation by Anthony W. Ulwick (2002), after Theodore Levitt's quarter-inch hole (The Marketing Mode, 1969).
Treats customers as hiring a product to make progress in a particular situation, with functional, emotional, and social jobs, so competitors and innovations are defined by the job.
When to reach for it
When deciding what to build next, how to position an offer, or what really competes with it for the customer's money.
How it runs
- Pick recent buyers of the product or its alternatives.
- Interview them about the moment they decided to buy.
- Name the functional job they were trying to get done.
- Name the emotional and social jobs alongside it.
- List everything else that gets hired for the same job.
Where it sits in SOLVE eX
Go to the source
- The Innovator's Solution, 2003
- Turn Customer Input into Innovation, Harvard Business Review, 2002
- The Marketing Mode: Pathways to Corporate Growth, 1969
- Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice, HarperBusiness, with Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon, and David S. Duncan, 2016