# Jobs to Be Done

Clayton Christensen et al., *Competing Against Luck* (HarperBusiness, 2016). Customers don't buy products based on demographics — they "hire" products to do specific jobs in specific situations.

## When to use

- Product / service / business design
- Differentiation from competitors (the real competitor is whatever currently does the job — often non-obvious)
- Failure analysis (a product that "should have worked" often was designed for a job customers don't have)
- Pricing (price in the unit of the job, not the cost of the product)
- Marketing copy (speak to the job, not the features)

## Don't use when

- Artistic or expressive work — "what job is this novel hired to do?" collapses what makes it specific
- Civic / social design — imports market logic that's wrong here
- Pure-research questions (no customer, no hire — use compression-progress)
- You don't have access to actual customers

## Core form

State the job as: **"When [situation/trigger], I want to [motivation], so I can [expected outcome]."**

The form forces specificity. Generic jobs ("when I want to be productive") are slop. Specific situations ("when I'm finishing a paper at 11pm and need a citation") are real.

## The four forces of switching (Bob Moesta)

A customer changes from one solution to another when **(push + pull) > (anxiety + habit)**:

1. **Push** of the situation — pain of current.
2. **Pull** of the new solution — appeal of where they're moving.
3. **Anxiety** about the new solution — fears it'll let them down.
4. **Habit** of the present — inertia.

Most failed product launches don't lose on (2). They have an excellent product. They lose on (3) and (4): unaddressed anxieties + inertia. **Design for forces 3 and 4, not just 2.**

## Switch-interview procedure

Talk to someone who recently switched to your category, or recently bought it for the first time. Recency matters; memory degrades.

Walk the timeline:
- When did you first realize you needed something different? (Be specific: time of day, where, what had just happened.)
- What did you try first? Why didn't it work?
- What were the alternatives?
- When did you decide on this product?
- What were you afraid would go wrong?
- What was the moment of "I'm going to buy this"?

Then identify the job ("When... I want to... so I can...") and the four forces.

## Worked example

*Switch from Mendeley to Zotero* (academic citation manager):

- Push: Mendeley sync failed for 6 months; lost references.
- Pull: Zotero free, open source, recommended by colleague.
- Anxiety: losing 6 years of notes.
- Habit: comfort with Mendeley UI.
- Buying moment: colleague's library imported cleanly with notes preserved.

**Job**: "When my reference manager fails me and I have years of accumulated work in it, I want to migrate to a new tool without losing my notes, so I can stay productive on my research."

**Design implication**: a citation manager whose strongest pitch is *migration*, not features. Killer feature: "import from anywhere with notes preserved." Verified import quality from each major competitor. Reverse-migration tool. All addresses force 3 (anxiety) and force 4 (habit) — what most competitors neglect. The *features* (citation management) are barely differentiating. The *migration* is the product.

## Anti-slop notes

- Generic jobs ("customers want to feel valued") are not jobs; they're platitudes. Real jobs tie to specific situations and outcomes.
- Don't fabricate switch-interview data. If you don't have customers, acknowledge the limit and recommend running real interviews.
- Don't apply JTBD to artistic, research, or civic work. It's a market-logic tool.
- Don't reduce humans to job-doers. JTBD is useful for purchase decisions; not all human behavior.
- The "hired to do a job" can become catechism. Use where it fits; don't import where it doesn't.

Source: Christensen et al., *Competing Against Luck* (HarperBusiness, 2016); Moesta, *Demand-Side Sales 101* (Lioncrest, 2020).