Video · ~5 min

Clay Christensen: The Jobs to be Done Theory (the milkshake example)

Clayton Christensen (HubSpot Marketing) · YouTube Free Beginner

Clay Christensen: The Jobs to be Done Theory (the milkshake example)

This is the canonical newcomer walkthrough: Christensen shows a team improving a milkshake on every obvious dimension and moving nothing, because they had the job wrong. It makes the good-versus-bad framing concrete in a few minutes, which is exactly the trap founders fall into when they optimize a feature instead of the job. Start here if the concept still feels abstract.

  • Improving a product on the wrong dimensions is what a bad job statement looks like in practice.
  • The same product can be hired for very different jobs (the morning commute versus the afternoon treat), so the situation defines the job.
  • Watch what people hire and fire, not just what they say they want, to name the job correctly.
Watch on YouTube ↗

It answers 4 questions

  1. How do I build customer personas that are actually useful and not fiction?
  2. How specific should my ideal customer be for a consumer app versus a B2B tool?
  3. What are the most common ways founders get JTBD wrong in practice?
  4. How do I do competitive research for a brand-new category where there are no direct competitors yet?

Read with it

  1. The single best thing ever written on customer conversations. It teaches you to ask about the customer's life and past... momtestbook.com Book · ~130 pages The Mom Test Rob Fitzpatrick
  2. Market size is meaningless until you know exactly who you're for, and Lenny turns that into a concrete, repeatable ICP exercise... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~15 min read How to identify your ideal customer profile (ICP) Lenny Rachitsky
  3. The best book on positioning against competitors by understanding the alternatives customers actually consider. Directly turns... aprildunford.com Book · ~200 pages Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It April Dunford
  4. Video · ~25 min How to Talk to Users Eric Migicovsky
  5. Turns the vague feeling of product-market fit into a number you can move. Ask users how they would feel if they could no longer... First Round Review Article · ~20 min read How Superhuman Built an Engine to Find Product/Market Fit Rahul Vohra
  6. A quick, free way to get a first-draft persona document out of your head and onto one page, useful exactly because our short... HubSpot Tool Make My Persona HubSpot
eChai Partner Brands The partnership →