(2017-12-25) Ulwick Jobs To Be Done Is For More Than Just Milkshakes

Tony Ulwick: Jobs-to-be-Done Is For More Than Just Milkshakes. Milkshake Marketing was designed as a tool for marketing, not innovation.

When it comes to putting the Theory into practice, 2 methods were called out in Clay Christensen’s 2003 book The Innovator’s Solution: the Milkshake Marketing method (a tool for marketing) and Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI) (a process used to inform both marketing and innovation).

The Milkshake Marketing camp often uses food products, such as milkshakes and candy bars, to help demonstrate their approach

The Milkshake Marketing camp interviews recent product purchasers about their purchase as a means to try and find unique circumstances of product use (which they describe as ‘jobs to be done’) that can be leveraged to sell more of that product.

Milkshake Marketers don’t make the core functional job the unit of analysis and study it deeply. What they describe as a “job-to-be-done” is what the ODI camp describes as an outcome-based segment

The Milkshake Marketing camp has yet to publish a case study in which they have proactively used their Job-to-be-Done methods to produce a successful result.

The ODI camp, with 26 years of experience putting the Theory into practice, takes a different, more comprehensive approach — and applies Jobs-to-be-Done Theory not only to marketing, but to product and service innovation as well.

While the Milkshake Marketing camp sees Jobs-to-be-Done as a way to align existing products with the reasons customers buy them, the ODI camp sees it as a way to look at an entire market through a new lens and detect any and all hidden opportunities for growth

The ODI camp studies the core functional job that people are trying to get done in a market.