1. Introduction: The Billion-Dollar Flop
In 1984, IBM spent 18 months and over a billion dollars on the PCjr, only for it to be declared a “flop” the day after release. This is not an outlier. Research shows that 72% to 83% of new products fail to meet expectations. The problem? Most companies treat innovation as an art form rather than a science.
2. The “Needs” Mystery: Why Your Team is Speaking Different Languages
If you ask your team to define a “customer need,” you’ll get a dozen different answers. In the JTBD framework, a need is a Desired Outcome—a measurable metric a customer uses to judge success.
“People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!” — Theodore Levitt
3. The “Ideas-First” Trap: Why Brainstorming is Often a Waste of Time
Most companies follow an “ideas-first” approach: brainstorm and then “fail fast.” Mathematically, this is doomed. With 50–150 desired outcomes in any market, the probability of an idea randomly hitting 15 unmet needs is one in 14 million.
| Approach | Methodology | Success Rate |
|---|---|---|
| Ideas-First | Brainstorming, guessing, and “failing fast.” | ~17% |
| Needs-First | Defining metrics and strategy before ideation. | ~86% |
4. Your Customer is Not a Single Person: The Three JTBD Roles
- The Job Executor: The person using the product (e.g., the Surgeon).
- The Product Lifecycle Support Team: Those who setup, interface, or maintain it (e.g., Nurses).
- The Purchase Decision Maker: The one looking through a financial lens (e.g., Hospital Administrator).
5. Stability in Chaos: The Job Stays, the Technology Fades
Technology moves fast, but “Jobs” are stable. The job of “listening to music” hasn’t changed in decades, even as we moved from vinyl to streaming. Focus on the job, and you can predict the next wave of disruption.
6. The 86% Success Rate: Turning Innovation into a Science
The Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI) methodology breaks the Core Functional Job into a Universal Job Map:
- Define → 2. Locate → 3. Prepare → 4. Confirm → 5. Execute → 6. Monitor → 7. Modify → 8. Conclude.
Within these steps, we uncover 50–150 “Desired Outcome” statements that follow a strict syntax: [Direction] + [Metric] + [Object] + [Context].
Conclusion: The Future of Your Growth Strategy
Move away from the “art” of brainstorming and toward the “science” of a reproducible system. If you break your product down into the process your customer is trying to execute, which of the 100+ metrics are you currently ignoring?