Formulating an Innovation Strategy With Jobs-to-Be-Done

Innovation can be a difficult process. You have to consider what the customer wants, what your competitors are doing, and what’s going on in your market. Creating an innovation strategy is one of the most important things that you can do for your company. In this blog post, we will talk about jobs-to-be-done and why it is so useful when creating an innovation strategy.

Understanding Innovation Strategy

What is innovation strategy? It is the process of understanding how you can create new or better products and services for your customers. This includes understanding what your customers want, what your competitors are doing, and what’s going on in your market. It also includes figuring out how to bring these new products and services to market.

Using Jobs-to-Be-Done to Create a Winning Innovation Strategy

The best way to create an innovation strategy is by using the jobs-to-be-done methodology. Jobs-to-be-done is a customer-centric approach that helps companies understand their customers’ relationships with their products in order to create new or better products and services.

In order to use jobs-to-be-done, you first need to understand your customer’s current job and define your market as the group of individuals who are trying to get that job done. You can then do user research through A/B testing, surveys, interviews, etc to understand how your customers are currently trying to get their jobs done. After, you can figure out which market segments, or jobs, are underserved by current solutions on the market. Once you can quantify these, make sure they are large enough to be profitable, and segment them, you can implement a product design strategy that will help you innovate more effectively.

Not only does this methodology help companies create a more effective product design strategy, but it also helps them innovate more predictably. When companies are constantly better understanding their customers’ relationship with their products, they can consistently make the right updates and create the right now products. Therefore, competitive advantage is not based on activities, product features, or benefits, but rather on actionable customer insights and data.

Jobs-to-Be-Done in Action

A perfect example of how jobs-to-be-done can be used to create a winning innovation strategy is the story of Scrub Daddy. In 2012, Shark Tank investor and entrepreneur, Lori Greiner, invested in a scrub brush called the Scrub Daddy after it was presented on the show. The Scrub Daddy was designed to clean dishes more effectively than traditional scrub brushes. At the time, the most popular dish scrub brush on the market was the Scotch-Brite Dobie.

The problem with the Dobie, and other traditional scrub brushes, is that they are difficult to hold and use. They also tend to scratch non-stick cookware. The Scrub Daddy was designed to address these issues by being flexible, soft, and easy to hold. It also reduced the amount of scratching on non-stick cookware compared to traditional scrub brushes, which allowed it to stay cleaner longer and not need replacing as often. Additionally, the Scrub Daddy creatively added a smile in the middle of its sponge, making it more fun to use.

The Scrub Daddy experienced great success not because its customers were underserved in the area of kitchen cleaning, but because its customers needed a scratch-free, flexible, and easy-to-hold solution that their regular kitchen cleaning tools were not solving effectively.

While it may look like some companies get lucky with their innovative ideas, this is far from true. Jobs-to-be-done is a powerful methodology that most successful companies employ to create a winning innovation strategy.