Defining the Job There is a simple, but powerful, insight at the core of our theory: customers don’t buy products or services; they pull them into their lives to make progress. We call this progress the “job” they are trying to get done, and in our metaphor we say that customers “hire” products or services to solve these jobs. When you understand that concept, the idea of uncovering consumer jobs makes intuitive sense. But as we have suggested, our definition of a Job to Be Done is precise—and we need to take a step back and unpack the elements to develop a complete theory of jobs.
