Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice

by Clayton M. Christensen

Questions for Leaders How connected are your innovation efforts to the core jobs your company was started to solve? How would your people characterize the fundamental business you are in? Would they describe it in terms of solving an important job in their customers’ lives, or in terms of the products and services you offer? What data drives your innovation and investment decisions? How closely connected is this data to your customers’ jobs? Are you falling prey to the Fallacy of Surface Growth, that is, are you overly focused on driving growth through selling new products to existing customers without an understanding of the progress customers are trying to make in their lives? What data is gathered and presented to make important innovation and investment decisions? What mechanisms do you have in place to ensure that this data reveals what you need to see, rather than what is comforting to believe? How are you ensuring that your customers’ Job to Be Done has a voice in your decision making and resource allocation activities?