Customers & Research

What does 'jobs to be done' actually mean?

A starting point

People don't buy products, they 'hire' them to make progress in a specific situation, the famous milkshake was hired to make a boring commute bearable, not because it was tasty. Find the job, and you understand why people switch, what they compare you to, and what would make them fire you.

Go deeper

Hand-picked from around the web, each with a note on why it's here.

Read

📄 Article
Free Beginner

Clay Christensen's Milkshake Marketing

From HBS Working Knowledge by Clayton Christensen (via Harvard Business School) ~8 min read

Why we picked it

The primary-source telling of the milkshake story, the single most memorable illustration of Jobs to Be Done, straight from Christensen and HBS. The best on-ramp to JTBD.

  • Customers 'hire' products to do a job in a specific situation
  • The milkshake was hired to make a boring commute bearable, not just for taste
  • Understand the job, and the right product improvements become obvious
  • Demographics miss the point, situation and job drive purchases
Open library.hbs.edu →
📄 Article
Freemium Intermediate

Know Your Customers' 'Jobs to Be Done'

From Harvard Business Review by Clayton M. Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon, David S. Duncan ~20 min read

Why we picked it

The canonical HBR article that formalizes JTBD from its originators, the authoritative reference every founder citing 'jobs to be done' should have actually read.

  • A 'job' is the progress a customer is trying to make in a circumstance
  • Jobs have functional, social, and emotional dimensions
  • Innovation succeeds when it's organized around the job, not the product category
  • Understanding the job reveals who and what you truly compete with
Open hbr.org →

People also ask

How is JTBD different from features, personas, or user needs? Personas describe who; JTBD describes the progress they're trying to make and the struggle that pushes them to switch. Features are your answer; th... Intermediate 2 resources → How do I actually uncover the job my customers are hiring my product for? Interview people who recently switched to or bought something in your space and reconstruct the timeline: what triggered the search, what they used... Intermediate 3 resources → Who are my real competitors once I think in jobs to be done? Anything the customer currently 'hires' to get the same job done, including a spreadsheet, a WhatsApp group, a competitor, or doing nothing at all.... Intermediate 3 resources → How do I turn a job to be done into product and messaging decisions? Write the job as a struggling-moment statement ('when I ___, I want to ___, so I can ___') and use it as the filter for what to build and how to pi... Advanced 2 resources →