Understand your customers

What does 'jobs to be done' actually mean?

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

2 resources, 2 link-checked.

📄 Article
✓ Link checked Free Beginner

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.

Clay Christensen's Milkshake Marketing

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

  • 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
✓ Link checked Freemium Intermediate

This is the canonical piece that put jobs to be done on the map, written by the people who coined it. It uses the famous milkshake story to show that customers do not buy products, they hire them to make progress in a specific situation, which is the exact lens this question is about. Read it as the clearest short starting point before going deeper into JTBD.

Know Your Customers' Jobs to Be Done

From Harvard Business Review by Clayton Christensen et al. ~20 min read

  • Customers hire a product to make progress in a specific circumstance, so the job, not the customer profile, is the unit of analysis.
  • The same product can be hired for very different jobs, which changes how you build and market it.
  • You find the job by studying the struggle and the context, not by asking people to rank features.
Open hbr.org →

Terms in this answer

Jobs to Be Done

People also ask

How is JTBD different from features, personas, or user needs? 2 → How do I actually uncover the job my customers are hiring my product for? 3 → Who are my real competitors once I think in jobs to be done? 3 → How do I turn a job to be done into product and messaging decisions? 2 → How many customer interviews do I need before I trust the job I've found is real? 3 → Customers say they want feature X, but is that the job or just a solution they've imagined? 3 →

Also in How Founders Use AI

How founders actually use AI for this, over in Market Research.

How do founders validate a startup idea with AI in a weekend? 20 → How do I use AI to map competitors, pricing, and positioning? 24 →

Also in GTM

The same ground, over in Who you sell to, and why they care, our GTM track.

What is an ICP and how is it different from a persona? People use both words for the same thing. 4 → What is positioning in plain English, and why does everyone insist we have got it wrong? 3 →
eChai Partner Brands The partnership →