Collecting and analyzing jobs-to-be-done
via the Daily Mail I’ve previously written about collecting jobs-to-be-done from customers. Because I was analyzing a broad topic across the entire innovation lifecycle, it was a good way to get a breadth of insight. However, it doesn’t work as well in the more common situation for product managers and innovators: analyzing a specific flow. […]
The Folly of Inside-Out Product Thinking
Inside out just doesn’t fit right Ever run into this deductive reasoning? Customers like our existing products and our company We are building a new product that reflects the priorities of a company executive Therefore, customers will like our new product It’s a clear violation of the First Law of Product: Customers decide what products they […]
The Product Manager is the Chief Customer Development Officer
If pressed, what would you say is the secret to product success? Certainly there are a number of things that go into making and selling products. Prioritization, design, manufacturing frameworks, marketing, service, cost of production, etc. Each of these elements needs to be optimized, and there are people, practices and tools that do just that. […]
10 examples of fabulously flawed product-first thinking
In talking about jobs-to-be-done here, I sometimes think that all I’m doing is stating the obvious. I mean, isn’t it obvious that you’d create something that helped fulfill a need or desire? What else would you do? But I’ve seen in my own work experience, and across a multitude of initiatives in other industries, cases […]
Uncover latent needs with a simple question
After publishing Latent needs are overplayed as an innovation dynamic, I got a lot of feedback. Plenty of agreement, but also some good counterpoints. And in reading through some of them, I realized that there is something to this. A lot of people are convinced that whole markets are waiting to be built based on people […]
Tell your work story with an infographic
I have recently found myself updating my resume. Why? After 4 1/2 years at Spigit, I have moved on as the company has been acquired by Mindjet. It was a good run there. So I needed to dust off the resume. And you know, it was eye-opening how limiting resumes are. They are great for their […]
Latent needs are overplayed as an innovation dynamic
Reading this thought piece from the Silicon Valley Product Group, The End of Requirements, I saw this point about latent needs: Unrealized needs (also called “latent needs”) are those solutions where customers may not even be aware they even have the need until after they see and experience the solution. Examples include digital video recorders, […]
Generate opportunity maps with customer jobs-to-be-done
In seeking to better understand customer jobs-to-be-done, I found myself a bit underarmed. Meaning, I didn’t really have a way to do this. The value of jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) thinking has only emerged recently. It’s still nascent, and there aren’t ready guideposts to follow. However, Tony Ulwick has been at it over two decades. Indeed, his […]
Exactly what jobs will self-driving cars satisfy?
On Twitter, I made this observation about the future of self-driving cars: Our kids will have a very different “driving” experience. Self-driving cars allow them to work during transit, and improve safety. #jetsons— Hutch Carpenter (@bhc3) September 22, 2013 A moment later, Megan Panatier made this skeptical counterpoint: Whenever I hear people talking about self […]
What do you mean customers don’t know what they want?
If I’d asked customers what they want, they’d have said more convenience and relevance. Look familiar? I’ve riffed on that Henry Ford quote about faster horses, yada, yada. It’s not too far off from what customers would theoretically have been seeking in faster horses. I altered that quote to fit a modern day phenomenon: 3D […]
Finding opportunities to unseat incumbents
On Quora, this question was asked: Competition: How do you assess the value of a new product or service vs an incumbent’s? Is there a starting set of criteria? eg. price, quantity provided, ease of use, breadth and so on. I’m thinking specifically of a product to supply financial news and information and prices. What […]
A Method for Applying Jobs-to-Be-Done to Product and Service Design
Say you’re designing something new for a product or service. Of course, you have your own ideas for what to do. But, how informed are you really about what is needed? This is a question I faced in thinking about game mechanics used in a social platform. A common product approach is to work up […]
What’s your view on customers’ value to innovation?
More and more, customer-centricity is becoming a thing. As in, an increasingly important philosophy to companies in managing day-to-day and even longer term planning. In comes in different forms: design thinking, social CRM, service-dominant logic, value co-creation. But it’s not pervasive at this point. Companies still are spotty on how much they integrate customers into their processes. […]
Tweets Offer Little Value in Understanding Customer Needs
Social media. A rich source of insight and opportunity for companies. Why, it’s an article of faith that customers are talking…on their terms…where they want. So get out there and learn from them! See what this IBM executive says:
Jobs-to-be-done’s place in a customer-centric organization
On Twitter, I asked this question: When firms talk about being customer-centric today, what are they actually *doing*? FB page? Reacting to tweets? Sentiment analysis? #scrm — Hutch Carpenter (@bhc3) May 15, 2012 I asked it, as I had a conversation in recent days with a fellow from a large corporate. Customer-centricity was recently adopted […]
