JTBD

Jobs To Be Done is a theory formulated by Clayton Christensen. The idea is simple and turns everything upside down: people don’t buy products, they “hire” them to do a specific job. Christensen's famous example: McDonald's discovered that milkshakes were being "hired" in the morning as a breakfast replacement on the road, rather than as a dessert. The competitor is not another milkshake, but a banana or bagel.

Almost JTBD changes the way you do research. Instead of “who is your target client” - “in what situation and why did he do it.” Instead of demographic segments, there are “jobs” that need to be completed. This removes the cognitive noise: a 35-year-old mother and a 25-year-old student may be hiring the same product for the same job, even though their “personas” are completely different.

I use JTBD paired with the Value Proposition Canvas when developing positioning. Switch interviews - interviews about the moment of switching from one product to another - provide the most honest data. People don’t invent motives after the fact, they tell a specific story: “I was in the kitchen, it was eight in the evening, and I realized that...”. There is real insight in these details.