Competing Against Luck in Practical Service Design

Oct 10, 2016 Dave rated it really liked it

Jobs Theory (fully the Theory of Jobs to be Done) is framed around the central construct of a 'Job' that a product or service is 'hired' to do or 'fired' for not doing. Clayton Christensen and co-authors argue that successful innovation is not dictated by luck; it's predicated on a company's ability to uncover, define, and organize to deliver on a Job to be Done (implicitly or explicitly).

The core idea of a Job to be Done is intuitive: people don't want products, they want to make progress in th Jobs Theory (fully the Theory of Jobs to be Done) is framed around the central construct of a 'Job' that a product or service is 'hired' to do or 'fired' for not doing. Clayton Christensen and co-authors argue that successful innovation is not dictated by luck; it's predicated on a company's ability to uncover, define, and organize to deliver on a Job to be Done (implicitly or explicitly).

The core idea of a Job to be Done is intuitive: people don't want products, they want to make progress in their life. They don't want a drill, they want a quarter inch hole. But there's a bit more nuance: the Job is only exists in a specific context (circumstances), and the Job must be fulfilled at functional, social, and emotional levels. See also: Don Norman's three levels of cognitive processing.

For many, the core ideas behind Jobs Theory—and necessary skills of practice—aren't new. Researchers should be familiar with needfinding and synthesizing goals at emotional, functional, and social levels; both are analogous to uncovering a Job. Designers should be familiar with defining end-to-end service experiences, depicting how customers will make progress on their Job in specific circumstances of use. Business leaders and consultants will be familiar with the work of aligning larger teams around a specific purpose, the Job to be Done, and implementing process and structure oriented around the customer's needs, rather than an internal (and limiting) capability or functional point of view.

Competing Against Luck unifies these themes of research, design, execution and alignment in a broad business context: innovation. It presents the case that a Jobs to be Done orientation allows businesses to remove luck from the equation with a causal understanding of why attempts to innovate will succeed or not. Design is never discussed explicitly, but Jobs Theory, rooted in business outcomes, is a strong new hook for designers to orchestrate and define what a company will deliver, and why.

From a designer's perspective, there is danger in the implicit argument that innovation, of any form, is good as long as it succeeds. Jobs Theory can be used as a framework for successful innovation, but the book never discusses or attends to the larger and long-term consequences of innovation, be it in "yellow fats" category, the transportation industry, or for companies that produce new-and-innovative packagings of flavored sugar water. ...more

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