The foremost authority on innovation and growth presents a path breaking book every company needs to transform innovation from a game of chance to one in which they develop products and services customers not only want to buy, but are willing to pay premium prices for
How do companies know how to grow? How can they create products that they are sure customers want to buy? Can innovation be more than a game of hit and miss? Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen has the answer. A generation ago, Christensen revolutionized business with his ground-breaking theory of disruptive innovation. Now, he goes further, offering powerful new insights.
After years of research, Christensen has come to one critical conclusion: our long held maxim—that understanding the customer is the crux of innovation—is wrong. Customers don’t buy products or services; they “hire” them to do a job. Understanding customers does not drive innovation success, he argues. Understanding customer jobs does.
The “Jobs to Be Done” approach can be seen in some of the world’s most respected companies and fast-growing start-ups, including Amazon, Intuit, Uber, Airbnb and Chobani yogurt, to name just a few. But this book is not about celebrating these successes—it’s about predicting new ones. Christensen contends that by understanding what causes customers to “hire” a product or service, any business can improve its innovation track record, creating products that customers not only want to hire, but that they’ll pay premium prices to bring into their lives. Jobs theory offers new hope for growth to companies frustrated by their hit and miss efforts.This book carefully lays down Christensen’s provocative framework, providing a comprehensive explanation of the theory and why it is predictive, how to use it in the real world—and, most importantly, how not to squander the insights it provides.
Product Details
- Hardcover: 288 pages
- Publisher: Harper Business; Latest edition (28 October 2016)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0062435612
- ISBN-13: 978-0062435613
- Product Dimensions: 3 x 15.5 x 23.1 cm
About the Author
New York Times bestselling author Clayton Christensen is a Harvard Business School professor and world renowned innovation strategy and growth expert. Thinkers50 named him 2013’s most influential living management thinker in the world.
Taddy Hall is a Principal at The Cambridge Group (part of The Nielsen Company) and Leader, The Nielsen Breakthrough Innovation Project. He has worked closely with some of the world’s leading companies on breakthrough innovation, including Anheuser Bush, PepsiCo, Kraft, Conagra, Big Heart Pet and Nestlé.
Karen Dillon is the former editor of Harvard Business Review and Christensen’s co-author on New York Times bestseller How Will You Measure Your Life?
David Duncan is a senior partner at Innosight and a leading thinker and advisor on innovation strategy and growth. He works closely with top leaders at many of the world’s most iconic companies to help them navigate disruptive change, create sustainable growth and build the organizations of the future.Review
This game-changing book is filled with compelling real world examples, including from inside Intuit. Jobs Theory has had --and will continue to have ---a profound influence on Intuit’s approach to innovation. It just might change yours, too. (Scott Cook, Co-founder & Chairman of Intuit)
Clayton Christensen’s books on innovation are mandatory reading at Netflix. (Reed Hastings, Co-founder and CEO of Netflix)
Competing Against Luck offers fresh thinking on how to get innovation right. Clayton Christensen and his coauthors offer a compelling take on how to truly understand customers by the progress they’re seeking to make in their lives. Bravo! (Muhtar Kent, CEO of The Coca-Cola Company)
Clay Christensen and his co-authors have presented critical business thinkers and doers with a breakthrough theory that will change how leaders approach innovation by reverse engineering from a high value and focused customer job to be done. I have read it cover to cover--and will ask my top team to do the same. (Ron Frank, IBM)
[Competing Against Luck] will likely become part of the thoughtful founder’s strategy arsenal. True to its unpretentious name, jobs theory is disarmingly simple… “What job is our customer trying to accomplish?” stands as one of those great business questions that companies deploy to stimulate creative juices at the start of meetings. But Competing Against Luck doesn’t just introduce a tool, it also lays out a program. (Inc. Magazine)
