Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice

by Clayton M. Christensen

We define a “job” as the progress that a person is trying to make in a particular circumstance.

Jobs insights are fragile—they’re more like stories than statistics.

Remember, the insights that lead to successful new products look more like a story than a statistic.

“If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, then you don’t know what you are doing.”

In the words of Sherlock Holmes, “There is nothing more deceptive than the obvious fact.”

The origin story of most companies typically involves an entrepreneur identifying an important job that does not have an existing satisfactory solution, and developing a creative way to solve it.

Focusing on customers’ Jobs to Be Done provides not just a one-off improvement idea, but an enduring innovation North Star.

“What gets measured, gets done.”

“We can measure lots of things. But what you measure matters.”