Unlocking Innovation: A Comprehensive Summary of “When Coffee and Kale Compete” by Alan Klement

In “When Coffee and Kale Compete,” Alan Klement, a seasoned entrepreneur and product manager, dismantles conventional wisdom about product development and market competition. Klement’s central purpose is to equip innovators, entrepreneurs, and business leaders with a profound understanding of Customer Jobs Theory (JTBD) – a framework that reveals why people truly “hire” products and services. He argues that by focusing on customers’ inherent desire for self-betterment and their struggles for progress, companies can create and sell products that genuinely resonate, foster predictable innovation, increase revenue, and reduce waste. This summary promises to break down every important idea, example, and insight from Klement’s work, providing a clear and accessible guide to mastering JTBD and transforming your approach to building products people will actually buy.

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1 Challenges, Hope, and Progress

This opening chapter sets the stage by illuminating the daunting challenges faced by modern businesses in an era of accelerating creative destruction and the hope that Customer Jobs Theory offers as a guiding light. Klement emphasizes that success in innovation hinges on understanding the customer’s deep-seated desire for self-betterment.

The Accelerating Pace of Creative Destruction

Klement highlights that the average time a company spends on the S&P 500 has plummeted from 55 years in 1960 to about 20 years in 2015. This acceleration is driven by the ease of creating and distributing new products, leading to constant disruption where new innovations rapidly replace incumbents. He illustrates this with a personal anecdote: his purchase of a Nespresso machine led him to stop buying espresso from his local coffee shop – a clear example of one innovation winning at the expense of another. He asserts that Customer Jobs Theory helps explain this creative destruction by focusing on the customer’s unchanging desire for self-betterment, even as solutions come and go.

The Stifling Grip of “Sunk Costs”

A significant challenge is the sunk-cost fallacy, where companies cling to legacy business models and products due to past investments, even when change is necessary. Klement cites the Kodak downfall as a prime example: despite inventing the digital camera in 1975, management shelved it to protect profitable film sales, ultimately leading to bankruptcy in 2012. This illustrates that ties to legacy business models, not just technology, often prevent adaptation. Customer Jobs, Klement argues, provides the confidence to break free from these models and embrace future innovations.

Misguided Focus on Physical Characteristics and Needs

Klement critiques the common mistake of focusing on customers’ physical characteristics or demographics (e.g., age, location) and their stated “needs” or “expectations.” He uses the example of his 65-year-old father-in-law and his 35-year-old self, both owning the same smartphone and using it similarly, despite vastly different demographics. This shows that demographics can be misinformation, while JTBD helps differentiate good data from bad by focusing on what truly drives purchasing decisions, leading to more profitable product changes. He stresses that focusing on current “needs” limits future innovation, as evidenced by Nokia and RIM’s insistence on physical keyboards while customers eventually preferred touchscreens. Instead, innovators should prioritize customer progress, asking how they can enable customers to be more than they are.

Flawed Understanding of Competition and Measurement

A critical challenge is defining competition incorrectly. Klement points to the costly flop of the chotuKool refrigerator in India, which failed because its creators (including Clayton Christensen, despite his later popularization of JTBD) defined competition too narrowly, overlooking how low-income Indians truly solved their cooling problems (e.g., clay pots, daily fresh buying). This illustrates that most innovation theories mislead by failing to consider how customers perceive competition. JTBD provides a framework to build an accurate model of competition from the customer’s perspective. He also warns against managing by visible figures only (e.g., CSAT, NPS, MAU), citing Spirit Airlines’ profitability despite low CSAT scores and Twitter’s MAU obsession potentially alienating loyal users. Klement emphasizes that visible figures are often incomplete or misleading proxies, and the most important figures are often “unknown or unknowable.” JTBD helps innovators understand the relationships around data and decide whether to improve existing products or risk developing new ones.

The Promise of Customer Jobs

Klement concludes the chapter by offering hope and outlining the benefits of Customer Jobs Theory. He states that JTBD provides a collection of principles for understanding why customers buy and use products, distinguishing itself by its singular focus on customer’s desire for self-betterment.

• Alignment and distributed decision-making: JTBD creates a “true north” for the entire business, empowering autonomous and innovative decisions aligned with the customer’s job.
• Knowing what data are and are not needed: It helps innovators focus on relevant data for business strategy, advertising, design, and engineering, avoiding unnecessary measurements.
• Creating and sustaining a growth culture: JTBD focuses on offering growth opportunities to customers, answering questions like “How can we get more people to buy our product?” by emphasizing progress over mere problem-solving.
• A theory evolved over time: Its principles draw from statistical theory, economics, systems thinking, and psychology, proving reliable over 75 years by decoupling itself from specific product types and focusing on customer evolution.

He concludes by encouraging readers to approach the book with an open mind, abandoning preconceived notions and embracing principles over methods, as he has successfully done in his own entrepreneurial journey.

2 What is a Job to be Done (JTBD)?

This chapter dives into the fundamental question: what exactly is a Job to be Done (JTBD)? Klement moves beyond superficial definitions to reveal its core essence: the intrinsic human drive for self-improvement and purposeful transformation of one’s life.

Improve Your Life-Situation; Become More Than You Are

Klement asserts that humans possess an intrinsic desire to transform their life-situations into something better, a drive deeply embedded in our DNA. This isn’t merely about solving a problem, but about “becoming who you are,” a continuous exploration and realization of the self. He contrasts this human capacity for purposeful transformation with an animal’s reactive existence: a bear only thinks about better fishing, while a human envisions breeding fish to no longer need to fish, freeing time for other improvements like building a hut. This concept of “self-betterment” is central to JTBD.

He illustrates this with Charles Revson’s famous quote about Revlon: “In the factory, we make cosmetics. In the drugstore, we sell hope.” This perfectly encapsulates the JTBD idea: customers don’t buy the product itself (cosmetics) or its functional attributes (coloring skin); they buy the transformation it enables (hope, a “new me”). Revlon’s 1952 “Fire and Ice” campaign, with its provocative checklist and focus on the model Dorian Leigh, exemplifies selling this transformation, not just lipstick. A JTBD is not found, but designed, as customers imagine and desire this new, better version of themselves.

A Job to be Done Defined

Klement provides a precise definition:
“A Job to be Done is the process a consumer goes through whenever she aims to transform her existing life-situation into a preferred one, but cannot because there are constraints that stop her.”

This highlights JTBD as a transformative process (it starts, runs, and ends) focused on the customer’s desired change.

Products Enable Customers to Get A Job Done

Humans are limited; we cannot change life situations by ourselves. Progress only happens when we attach and integrate new ideas and products into our lives. Klement shares a detailed case study of Andreas, a medical tourism business owner, and his journey to “hire” Basecamp for a JTBD.

• The struggle: Andreas was using Google Sheets, Docs, and email, assuming this was how small companies operated, hitting a growth limit at five employees.
• The revelation: A friend, Jamie, introduces him to Basecamp, a project management tool specifically for small businesses. Andreas’s mind races, imagining how Basecamp could help his company stay organized and grow beyond its perceived limit.
• The JTBD: Basecamp enabled Andreas to gain control over how his business could be run, allowing him to grow it beyond five employees for the first time. The “new me” Andreas designed was a successful business owner capable of scaling.
  This story demonstrates that a JTBD is a process customers participate in, not something they passively “have.” Just as falling in love requires participation, completing a JTBD requires a product to help design, construct, and complete the desired transformation. Klement quotes Jeff Bezos: “No customer ever asked Amazon to create the Prime membership program, but it sure turns out they wanted it,” underscoring that customers often don’t know the solution, but they desire progress.

What Isn’t A Job to be Done

Klement clarifies common misunderstandings about JTBD, emphasizing that many popular interpretations are distortions.

Jobs Are Not Tasks or Activities

The biggest mistake is defining JTBD as an activity or task (e.g., “store and retrieve music,” “cut a straight line,” “make a quarter-inch hole”).

• These describe how you use a product, not why you buy it. For instance, Pandora and Spotify were designed to eliminate the task of storing music.
• He references Theodore Levitt’s drill example (“People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!”) but argues that Levitt “stopped too soon.” The hole itself is an intermediate goal; customers ultimately want to hang shelves, or even to organize and adorn their homes. This reveals the deeper “Be” goal.
• Klement suggests that if you’re focusing on tasks, you should use other brilliant design methods like Activity Theory, Activity-Centered Design, Cognitive Task Analysis, Goal-Directed Design, Use Cases, or Human-Computer Interaction (HCI).

There Are Not Different Types of Jobs (Emotional, Functional, Social)

Klement argues against categorizing Jobs into “functional,” “emotional,” or “social” types.

• Practically: Each customer job is a unique combination of core emotional desires (e.g., belonging, self-expression, control). While Facebook taps into these, it does so uniquely. Thinking of each job as unique is more successful than pigeonholing it into types.
• Theoretically: JTBD are design problems, not natural problems. Natural problems are falsifiable (true/false), while design problems (e.g., “How do we reduce crime?”) are not. No objective test exists to label a job as “social” or “emotional.” Trying to dissect jobs into types is unproductive.
• He provides a decision tree (Figure 8) to help determine if a description is truly a JTBD, emphasizing that it describes a “better me” – how a customer is better or what they can do now that they couldn’t before. JTBD is about progress, aligning with Albert Bandura’s view of humans as “proactive, aspiring organisms.”

Where Does Customer Jobs Theory Come From?

Klement traces the lineage of JTBD, highlighting that great theories are built by many people over time.

• Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction (75+ years ago): Schumpeter observed that new innovations “steal” customers from incumbents. JTBD incorporates his insight that competition can come from anywhere, not just similar products.
• W. Edwards Deming and Systems Thinking (60+ years ago): Deming’s influence is profound. He emphasized that customers and producers are connected by systems (“The customer is the most important part of the production line”). Deming also understood that simply improving existing products isn’t enough; innovation must be continuous to anticipate new solutions (e.g., transistors replacing vacuum tubes). He stated, “A dissatisfied customer does not complain; he just switches.”
• Psychology: Influences from Gary Klein (mental simulations), Amos Tversky, Daniel Kahneman, George Loewenstein (emotions, decision-making), and Ann Graybiel (behavioral economics, NDM) highlight that customers don’t always make rational decisions and their opinions can be inconsistent. JTBD recognizes that emotional forces shape motivation.
• The Originators (1990s): John B. Palmer, Rick Pedi, Bob Moesta, Julia Wesson, and Pam Murtaugh combined their experiences to develop the first Customer Jobs principles, coining the idea and language of customers having “Jobs” to get “Done.”
• Alan Klement (Today): Klement’s work, including this book, builds on their foundation, influenced by their personal guidance and the broader JTBD community, aiming to explain the theory reliably and consistently for successful innovation.

This chapter comprehensively defines JTBD as a transformative process driven by the desire for self-betterment, distinguishing it from mere tasks or static classifications, and grounding it in a rich intellectual history.

3 What Are the Principles of Customer Jobs?

This chapter distills the core tenets of Customer Jobs Theory, offering a foundational understanding of how to approach customer motivation and market dynamics. Klement presents a concise set of principles that serve as a guiding framework for successful innovation.

Principles of Customer Jobs

Klement outlines several fundamental principles that repeatedly appear throughout the book’s case studies:

• Customers don’t want your product or what it does; they want help making themselves better (i.e., they want to transform a life-situation, make progress).
  • Charles Revson’s insight for Revlon (“In the drugs stores we sell hope”) exemplifies this. Customers bought hope, not just cosmetics or their function.
  • Focusing on the product itself limits innovation. For example, 3M’s damage-free hanging products disrupted the drill market by eliminating the need for holes, understanding customers wanted to improve their homes without damage, not merely to “make holes.”
• People have Jobs; things don’t.
  • Products (phones, watches, dry-cleaning services) are solutions; they don’t have motivations or struggles. Only people have a JTBD, as they are the ones who struggle and seek to improve their lives.
• Competition is defined in the minds of customers, and they use progress as their criterion.
  • An entrepreneur seeking advice might consider reading books, watching videos, attending conferences, or giving advisory shares for mentorship. These are diverse solutions, but they all compete on the criterion of helping the entrepreneur make progress toward their goal of being advised and inspired.
  • Customers do not restrict competition based on product functionality or appearance; they use whatever helps them make progress against a JTBD.
• When customers start using a solution for a JTBD, they stop using something else.
  • This highlights the zero-sum nature of competition for a JTBD. If a solo entrepreneur uses Product People Club for motivation, they stop trying other solutions like online chat groups or Meetup.com. A customer prefers only one solution at a time for a given JTBD.
• Innovation opportunities exist when customers exhibit compensatory behaviors.
  • Compensatory behaviors are when customers use products in ways they weren’t originally intended.
  • Examples: Baking soda was used as a cleaner/deodorizer before Arm & Hammer marketed it as such. The Segway, failing as mass transportation, found success with law enforcement and tour companies. These “misuses” signal unmet needs and opportunities for new products or refitting existing ones.
• Favor progress over outcomes and goals.
  • Outcomes and goals are results (e.g., the ball went into the net). Progress measures improvement over time (e.g., becoming better at making goals).
  • Customers measure progress continually (e.g., feeling successful at every gym session, not just after losing 10 pounds).
  • Successful products continually improve customers’ lives, leading to new challenges and desired outcomes. Design for an ongoing feeling of progress.
• Progress defines value; contrast reveals value.
  • Products have no intrinsic value; their value emerges only when used to make progress.
  • Comparing “steak or pizza” is hard without context. But “When do you prefer steak, and when pizza?” reveals their value in different contexts. A steak at a fancy restaurant offers progress toward a better dining experience; at a kids’ birthday party, it doesn’t.
  • Contrast helps understand the value customers place on a product by comparing the progress it delivers against other options.
• Solutions for Jobs deliver value beyond the moment of use.
  • A car delivers value even when parked (peace of mind, ability to travel anytime).
  • The value of a product extends beyond its active use; it’s about how it improves customers’ lives holistically.
• Producers, consumers, solutions, and Jobs should be thought of as parts of a system that work together to evolve markets.
  • A system’s value is in how its parts (e.g., car components) work together to achieve a desired effect.
  • Weber Grills exemplifies this: they don’t just sell grills; they sell the ability to “become better grillers” and “better hosts/entertainers” through educational materials, recipes, accessories, and a hotline. Their products work as a constellation of products within a system to deliver ongoing progress.

These principles provide a robust framework for understanding customer motivation and identifying genuine innovation opportunities, moving beyond superficial product attributes or stated needs.

4 Case Study: Dan and Clarity

This chapter presents the compelling story of Dan Martell and Clarity, showcasing how applying Customer Jobs principles transformed his approach to product development, marketing, and business growth. It illustrates how understanding customer motivation and the competitive landscape can lead to significant success.

Improving Research and Understanding Competition

Dan Martell, a serial entrepreneur, founded Clarity in 2012 as a marketplace connecting entrepreneurs with experts for advice. Intrigued by Eoghan McCabe’s recommendation of Customer Jobs, Dan began applying its principles to grow Clarity faster.

• Shifting interview questions: Dan moved from broad questions like “How would you feel if you could no longer use this?” to JTBD-focused questions like “Can you tell me about the other solutions you’ve tried? What did, or didn’t you like about each one?” This shifted his focus from stated preferences to understanding customers’ journeys and their past attempts to solve problems.
• Uncovering competition through alternatives: By asking “What do customers see as competition to Clarity?” and “What would they spend their money on if they didn’t spend it on Clarity?”, Dan learned that Clarity’s competition included:
  • Joining entrepreneur groups
  • Hiring individual advisors (who take equity)
  • Using LinkedIn
  • Attending conferences
• This revealed that customers weren’t just seeking “advice” (a functional activity); they were seeking inspiration and motivation from respected figures to overcome an entrepreneurial slump. The “messenger” (the expert’s accomplishments) was often more valued than the message itself.

Marketing and Monetization Insights

Understanding the competitive landscape and the deeper customer motivation allowed Clarity to refine its messaging and revenue potential.

• Differentiating with “On-Demand”: Dan learned that the urgency for advice was key. Highlighting “on-demand business advice” differentiated Clarity from the asynchronous nature of LinkedIn or the scheduled nature of conferences.
• Pricing against alternatives: By recognizing that customers considered conferences as competition, Clarity could justify its pricing. If a conference ticket, airfare, hotel, and meals cost thousands, paying a few hundred dollars for direct access to a speaker was a compelling alternative. This insight helped Dan understand Clarity’s true value and revenue potential, informing its eventual acquisition by Fundable.

Addressing Anxiety and Habits

Dan’s JTBD approach also helped uncover and address forces that reduced demand, such as anxiety and existing habits.

• Silent Competitor: Anxiety: Dan discovered that a major “competition” was customers choosing to do nothing – continuing to struggle in the dark. Even for those who decided to use Clarity, anxieties arose: “What if the expert doesn’t answer my question?”, “Is the call recorded?”, “How should I prep?”
• Reducing Anxiety: To combat this, Clarity added prep questions and guidelines to email templates and notes on what a great call looks like. This was about making customers feel more comfortable and confident, directly addressing their anxiety-in-use. Dan valued finding “elegant, simple” ways to solve these anxiety points.

Researching New Features and Valuing Customer Conversations

JTBD provided a framework for validating new feature ideas, preventing wasted development efforts.

• Validating Features: Before building a feature, Dan’s team would ask “Have you ever tried to solve [this problem] before?” They learned that customers didn’t struggle with saving search results for experts (e.g., using browser bookmarklets), so they chose not to build that feature. This prevented over-engineering the product.
• “Stop Spying, Start Talking”: Dan strongly advocates for JTBD’s emphasis on talking with customers about their motivations rather than just analyzing logs or surveys (“spying”). He likens it to a retail shop owner hiding in the back room versus walking out and asking, “Hey, what brought you in here today? What are you looking for?” This direct conversation reveals deeper insights.

What’s the JTBD?

Based on the data, the core desire for progress is:

• More about: getting out of a rut, making a connection with someone whose accomplishments I respect, being inspired, being motivated to act, feeling like I’m on the right path, having confidence in what I’m doing, having success rub off on me, on demand.
• Less about: getting expert advice, talking with an expert, giving away equity, having a video chat with a mentor, e-mailing a mentor, mentoring, meeting other entrepreneurs, seeing a mentor live.

Possible JTBD descriptions for Clarity:

• “Help me get out of an innovation slump with inspirational advice from someone whom I respect.”
• “Give me the motivation to act with a kick in the butt from someone I respect.”
• “Take away the anxiety of making a big decision with assurance from someone else whose has been in a similar position.”
  These descriptions focus on motivation and emotional progress, explaining why customers would “hire” various solutions (Clarity, conferences, LinkedIn), rather than simply what they do.

Put It to Work

• Ask customers about what they’ve done, not just what they want. Focus on revealed preferences by inquiring about past actions and alternative solutions, rather than stated preferences from hypothetical questions. This provides more reliable data.
• Ask the right questions to learn how your customers view competition. Use questions like “What other solutions did you try/consider?” and “If you couldn’t use our product, what would you do instead?” to understand the full competitive landscape from the customer’s perspective.
• Learn what kind of progress customers are seeking. What’s their emotional motivation (JTBD)? Use that to segment competition. By comparing and contrasting alternatives, identify common motivations (e.g., “get me out of an entrepreneurial slump”). This reveals the deeper emotional JTBD that transcends functional differences between competing solutions.
• Ask yourself, “From which budget will my product take away money?” Understanding what customers stop using helps gauge revenue potential and price your product effectively. The more intense the desire for change, the more customers are willing to pay.
• Create better marketing material by speaking to your customers’ JTBD. Use language that directly addresses their struggles and desired progress, distinguishing your solution from alternatives. Ask customers what they told their friends about your product.
• Focus on delivering emotional progress (getting a Job Done). Don’t focus solely on functionality. Clarity succeeded because it focused on the emotional need for inspiration and confidence, not just “talking to an expert.” Prioritize the customer’s “better me” over specific features.

5 Case Study: Anthony and Form Theatricals

This chapter explores how Anthony Francavilla applied Customer Jobs to the enduring world of theater, revealing surprising insights about why people attend shows and how to innovate in a centuries-old industry. It demonstrates the power of JTBD to reimagine existing products and unlock new business models.

Uncovering Deeper Motivations for Attending Theater

Anthony Francavilla, cofounder of Form Theatricals, leveraged Customer Jobs to help theater productions grow. He learned about JTBD from Boris, an ethnographic interviewer, and then explored it further through online resources and a New York City Meetup.

• Beyond Surface-Level Preferences: Anthony moved beyond asking “what they did or didn’t like about the play.” He aimed to understand the Job customers were trying to get done.
• Children’s Theater Insights: Interviewing parents who brought their children to a show, Anthony asked about alternative activities they considered (e.g., LEGO Movie, video games, Girl Scouts). This revealed that parents weren’t just seeking “entertainment”; they wanted “help teaching their kids how to be independent…while also reinforcing that they are a member of a team.”
• Product Changes based on JTBD: This insight led to rewriting parts of the play to include a story arc where the hero works with others, providing parents a talking point. This was more powerful than merely telling writers to “write a movie a nine-year-old will like.” The JTBD provided a framework for creative leeway.
• “Shared Experiences” as a Key JTBD: Anthony dug deeper, discovering parents also sought “shared experiences” with their kids. Crucially, this wasn’t during the show itself, but afterward, when families discussed the performance over dinner. This revealed that the play could act as a vehicle for family conversations and bonding, informing script adjustments.

Reimagining Products and Eliminating Waste

JTBD helped Anthony not only identify new opportunities but also optimize existing efforts and reduce costs.

• Adult Drama Insights: For more serious dramas, Anthony found another JTBD: patrons wanted “to be a part of, or dipping their toes into, a different community.” Often, these were professionals (bankers, lawyers) seeking to engage with artists and diverse groups, to be part of an “arts scene.” This was about community and inclusion, not just “entertainment.”
• New Product: Theater Subscription: This insight led to a theater subscription product where patrons were placed in cohorts, seeing the same shows over months and engaging in social events. This fostered the desired community, making the subscription affordable through multiple payment options. This demonstrated how JTBD could build new business models, moving beyond the celebrity-driven, expensive shows.
• Eliminating Over-engineered Features: Anthony discovered that an expensive “after-the-show tour of the stage” offered by one client was not a purchase criterion. Most patrons bought discounted tickets last-minute for general entertainment and shared experience, unaware of the tour. This enabled the client to discontinue the tour, reducing costs without impacting sales. This highlights that features not tied to a JTBD are waste.

Understanding and Mitigating Anxiety

Anthony also explored the forces that prevented customers from buying, such as anxiety.

• “Impulse Purchase” Misconception: While many bought discounted tickets last-minute, these weren’t true impulse buys. Patrons often had an initial interest but were held back by anxiety over mixed reviews or full price. The discount compressed the purchase timeline by easing this anxiety.
• Addressing Anxiety: Anthony learned about the events leading to ticket purchase, finding that discounts were key to pushing customers “over the edge.” This demonstrates that reducing anxiety can be a powerful lever for conversion.

What’s the JTBD?

The case study reveals multiple directions of progress. Key themes include: using shared experiences to create/strengthen bonds; parents teaching children life lessons; and adding excitement/diversity to one’s social life.

The clearest JTBD for parents and children’s theater is:
“Help me teach my children how to be independent while also understanding how to work with others.”
This explains why parents choose theater over video games, movies, or Girl Scouts. Further questions would deepen understanding: “What are consequences of not teaching life lessons?” “What’s pushing them to change now?” “How will parents know their Job is Done?”

Put It to Work

• Frame design challenges as a JTBD to persuade teammates or management. Instead of dictating solutions, present problems as customer struggles for progress.
• Dig deeper when you tap into a struggle or aspiration. Ask specific examples of how customers tried to solve it before. Unpack what “shared experiences” truly means to them.
• Discover what customers value. Learn their expectations at purchase/first use to avoid overengineering solutions. If a feature isn’t valued (like the theater tour), remove it to reduce costs and increase profits.
• Determine if anxiety is a competitor. If it is, find ways of reducing it. Attack anxieties (e.g., cost, complexity) with the same fervor as product competitors. Anthony offered discounts and “liquid courage” (drinks) to ease mingling.
• Be suspicious of the “impulse purchase” concept. Most purchases have underlying motivations and anxieties, even if they appear spontaneous. Dig deeper into the timeline of decisions.

This chapter powerfully illustrates that JTBD goes beyond superficial product analysis, enabling deep understanding of customer motivations, leading to innovation, strategic product adjustments, and new business models in unexpected industries.

6 Case Study: Morgan and YourGrocer

This chapter tells the story of Morgan Ranieri and YourGrocer, demonstrating how applying Customer Jobs principles helped refine their business model, find effective marketing messages, attract first-time customers, and reduce churn by understanding and addressing customer habits.

Building Consensus and Discovering the True Customer

Morgan Ranieri, frustrated by his inability to get quality groceries from local shops after work, cofounded YourGrocer—a service delivering groceries from high-quality local stores. His third cofounder, Frankie Trindade, introduced the team to Customer Jobs and insisted on deep customer research before writing any code.

• Shared Understanding through Research: The team spent a week learning JTBD principles and jointly interviewing 20 customers. This “shared learning experience” was critical, bringing the visionary Morgan and pragmatic Frankie onto the same page, overcoming initial differing assumptions about customer struggles.
• Demographics as Misinformation: Their first “aha moment” was realizing their assumed target customer (young professionals like themselves) was largely incorrect. Almost every actual customer was a young family, typically a young mom with a couple of kids. This showed that demographic data, while useful for targeting, shouldn’t be the basis for core product decisions.

Unpacking Struggling Moments and Value Drivers

Morgan and his team focused on understanding the triggering events that pushed customers from one grocery solution to another, revealing their core values.

• The “Second Child” Push: Parents initially managed shopping at local quality shops with one child. However, the arrival of a second child made the logistics (car seats, strollers, multiple stops) “almost impossible.” This pushed them from their preferred local shops to less-preferred large supermarkets. This was a clear push force driving a change in behavior.
• Comparing Solutions to Uncover Values: By comparing customers’ experiences with local shops, large supermarkets, and existing delivery services, YourGrocer learned what customers valued and disliked:
  • Supermarkets offered convenience and selection (variety) but low quality.
  • Other delivery services were expensive or offered pre-selected assortments, leading to wasted food and frustration.
  • Convenience became the top priority for these families, followed by the ability to choose their own foods, pushing quality down their priority list—until YourGrocer came along.

Crafting Resonant Marketing Messages

Understanding customer values and struggles allowed YourGrocer to refine its marketing message.

• Moving Beyond Generic Claims: Initially, YourGrocer used multiple messages (eco-friendly, better price, convenient, local shops). However, by asking “What did you tell your friends about YourGrocer?” and looking at text messages, they found customers most frequently highlighted getting groceries “from the local shops you love.”
• Focused Message: The winning message combined the top values: “Online grocery shopping and same-day home delivery from the local shops you love.” This resonated because customers recognized the trusted local stores, validating the quality claim and differentiating YourGrocer.

Addressing Anxiety and Habits for Retention

YourGrocer tackled obstacles to customer adoption and retention by addressing anxiety and ingrained habits.

• Anxiety-in-Choice (First-Time Customers): Customers were anxious about delivery times, assuming they’d pick groceries then delivery. YourGrocer had it reversed. Violating this expectation caused abandonment.
• Reducing Anxiety: They adjusted the checkout flow to allow customers to pick a delivery window first, then shop. This minor change significantly increased conversions.
• Habits-in-Use (Repeat Customers): The biggest competition for repeat customers was their existing habit of running to a local store for a forgotten ingredient, then picking up extra groceries, causing them to fall out of YourGrocer’s buying cycle.
• Cultivating New Habits: YourGrocer combated this by encouraging regular orders and sending email reminders with prompts like “Need a top-up? Here’s a free delivery” or “Repeat last week’s order with one click.” This aimed to help customers become better meal planners, a new habit essential for using YourGrocer effectively.

The Core JTBD: Eliminating Trade-offs

Morgan concluded that the core JTBD was about eliminating a difficult trade-off:

• “Give me a way to provide quality food for my family without the stress of running around.”
• The deeper progress was reclaiming Saturday mornings and weekends—no longer sacrificing family time for quality food, or vice versa.
• YourGrocer wins by equalizing convenience (making local shopping as convenient as supermarkets), then leveraging other trade-offs like quality and supporting the community as differentiators.

What’s the JTBD?

• More about: My family having quality food, taking away the stress from grocery shopping, more family time, convenience.
• Less about: Grocery shopping online/supermarket/local shop, supporting the local community (these are solutions or secondary benefits).

The JTBD can be phrased as: “Help me provide my family with quality food without sacrificing family time or enduring the stress of multiple shopping trips.” This highlights the desired progress and the eliminated trade-off.

Put It to Work

• Don’t depend on demographics. Demographics can mislead. Focus on customer situations and struggles; use demographics only as a guide to find JTBD data.
• Know the difference between customers who switch because they are unhappy with your solution and those who switch because changing life circumstances prompt a redefinition of progress. The local shops lost customers not due to price or selection, but because families needed more convenience. Understanding why customers switch prevents misdirected product changes.
• Create better advertising and promotional material by speaking to what customers value. Learn what messages resonate by asking how customers described your product to others. “Local shops you love” was more powerful than generic “quality.”
• Teams become more motivated, build consensus, and share a vision when they do Customer Jobs research together. Joint research on the JTBD created a shared understanding and alignment for YourGrocer, leading to a more focused and successful initial product design.

7 The Forces of Progress

This chapter delves into the four emotional forces that generate and shape customer demand: Push, Pull, Inertia, and Anxiety. Klement emphasizes that successful innovators understand and manage all four forces, not just those that create demand.

Forces That Oppose Each Other

The Forces of Progress are the emotional drivers behind customer demand for a solution. They operate in two opposing groups:

• Demand Generation: Push and Pull forces work together to create a desire for change.
• Demand Reduction: Inertia and Anxiety forces work to block or slow down demand.
  Customers experience these forces before, during, and after a purchase. Most innovators mistakenly focus only on demand generation. Klement argues that successful innovators consider all four forces and how they contribute to the larger system of customers, producers, demand, and products.

Unpacking Demand Generation

Demand is never spontaneous; it always arises from a combination of Push and Pull.

• Push: This force makes customers unhappy with the status quo, prompting them to seek change.
  • External Pushes: Circumstances outside the customer’s control. Morgan’s YourGrocer case study shows parents experiencing an external push when the second child made multi-store grocery shopping unbearable.
  • Internal Pushes: Circumstances within the customer. Clarity’s customers (entrepreneurs) felt an internal slump or lack of motivation, pushing them to seek inspiration. Form Theatricals found parents wanting to teach life lessons or individuals wanting to dip into a different community.
• Pull: This force draws customers toward a new solution or a better life.
  • Pull for a Better Life: Customers buy products to make their lives better, not just to own or use the product. The idea of this “better life” (or “new me”) is what pulls them to act. Innovators must understand how customers will evolve with the right solution. If customers don’t envision a better life or believe change is possible (e.g., Dan’s entrepreneurs “sitting in the dark”), they won’t be motivated.
  • Pull Toward a Solution: This is the motivation to choose one solution over another. The context of the customer’s “push” shapes their “pull” criteria. For example, an entrepreneur needing urgent, specific advice from Mark Cuban might choose Clarity, while one less rushed might wait for a conference. This explains why multiple solutions for the same JTBD can coexist.

Push and Pull Shape The JTBD

Push and Pull are interdependent; demand exists only when they work together.

• Generating Demand: Elon Musk’s Tesla strategy exemplifies this. He first created “pull” with high-end electric cars, persuading customers that electric cars could be attractive and practical, before producing cheaper models. The unprecedented preorders for the low-end Model 3 show this pull was successfully established.
• Failing to Generate Demand: The Tata Nano flop illustrates the opposite. Tata focused on a low price (addressing a “push” for affordability) but failed to create enough “pull” (lacking desired features like A/C, stereo, and safety). Customers chose their motorcycles or used cars instead, showing that price alone isn’t enough if the product doesn’t help get the Job Done. Klement notes that “High price may actually draw in customers rather than push them away. It implies quality.”

Unpacking Demand Reduction

Understanding forces that reduce or block demand is as critical as understanding demand generation, as they are silent competitors.

• Anxiety: This is the fear or uncertainty that prevents a purchase or continued use. Loewenstein identified two types:
  • Anxiety-in-Choice: Felt before using a product, when one doesn’t know if it can get the job done (e.g., “Will Clarity make me sound stupid?”). These drive away first-time customers.
  • Anxiety-in-Use: Felt after using a product, due to concerns about its qualities or consistency (e.g., “The bus is late; I wish I knew its arrival time.”). Clarity’s customers feared not knowing how to prep for calls, leading to anxiety-in-use. These drive away repeat customers.
• Inertia: This is the tendency to do nothing or remain unchanged, often manifesting as habits.
  • Habits-in-Choice: Forces that prevent switching from one product to another at the moment of decision. Excel’s success over Lotus 1-2-3 was partly due to its ability to import Lotus files, overcoming the inertia of existing data.
  • Habits-in-Use: Existing routines that block continued use of a new product. YourGrocer’s customers reverted to supermarket runs for forgotten ingredients, a habit that disrupted their new ordering pattern. Morgan addressed this by encouraging meal planning and offering “top-up” deliveries.
• Inertia and Anxiety are Silent Competitors: These forces are as detrimental to revenue as a direct product competitor. Addressing them (e.g., by making a product less intimidating, helping develop new habits) is often an “easy win” because the customer already desires the product but is simply blocked.

This chapter provides a powerful framework for dissecting why customers buy (or don’t buy) products, moving beyond simplistic views of demand to a holistic understanding of the emotional landscape of decision-making.

8 When You Define Competition Wrong

This chapter delivers a stark warning about the perils of misdefining competition and blindly applying innovation theories, using the infamous chotuKool flop and the mainframe vs. PC misconception as compelling examples. It underscores the critical importance of a customer-centric view of competition through the JTBD lens.

Too “Kool” For School? The ChotuKool Flop

Klement recounts the story of Godrej, an Indian manufacturer, attempting to create a low-cost, feature-minimal refrigerator called the chotuKool for low-income Indians, advised by Harvard Business School professor Dr. Clayton Christensen.

• Initial Hype: Launched in 2008 with great fanfare, hailed as a “disruptive innovation” that would create “inclusive growth.” Predictions of millions of sales were made.
• Abysmal Failure: After two years and targeting 114.2 million people, only 15,000 units were sold. It was a “costly flop,” leading to abandonment of similar product plans.
• Costly Repositioning: The chotuKool was later redesigned and repositioned as a high-end, portable cooler for middle-class Indians, a complete reversal of its original “disruptive” intent.

Why Did The ChotuKool Flop?

Klement argues the failure stemmed from fundamental misunderstandings of Customer Jobs and competition.

• Solution-First Approach: Godrej and Christensen began by deciding on a solution (a low-cost refrigerator) before truly understanding customer motivation. They assumed customers wanted a low-cost refrigerator, driven by a flawed “disruptive innovation” theory that restricts competition to similar products.
• Ignoring Customer Motivation: Godrej’s own research revealed crucial insights: “I don’t feel the need for a refrigerator. I use an earthen pot to cool water. I buy vegetables for immediate consumption and boil milk to avoid it from getting spoilt.” Yet, they focused only on the price customers would accept for a refrigerator, ignoring that many had good-enough existing solutions for their cooling JTBDs. They focused on confirming their biases rather than truly listening.
• Oversimplified Competitive Model: The biggest flaw was the theory’s narrow definition of competition. Christensen and Godrej limited competition to other electric refrigerators, completely missing the actual solutions customers were “hiring”:
  • Buying fresh vegetables daily for immediate consumption.
  • Boiling milk to prevent spoilage.
  • Using traditional earthen pots or the pot-in-pot cooler (MittiCool).
  • These were free or very low-cost solutions, making a $60-70 chotuKool seem expensive and unnecessary.
• Misunderstanding “Nonconsumption”: Godrej wrongly believed low-income Indians were “nonusers” or in a state of “nonconsumption.” Klement asserts that JTBD rejects this idea: if consumers have a JTBD, they are always using something for it, even if it’s a compensatory behavior, a self-made solution, or a combination of actions. The chotuKool’s target customers were consumers, just not consumers of electric refrigerators.
• Lack of Profit Potential: The chotuKool targeted people earning a few dollars a day, failing to grasp the concept of “whose profits was the chotuKool going to steal?” There was no significant budget to tap into; switching from free or very cheap existing solutions required a dramatic improvement in life that the chotuKool didn’t deliver.

The Mainframe Versus the PC

Klement debunks the common misconception that PCs “disrupted” mainframes, highlighting how a misdiagnosis of competition can lead to false dilemmas.

• The False Narrative: The common story states PCs, being cheaper and simpler, appealed to less demanding customers, created a new market, and eventually eliminated the mainframe industry.
• The Reality: IBM’s mainframe business is still hugely profitable ($1 billion invested in its z12 model in 2012, serving 96% of top banks, 92% of top US retailers). Mainframes are used for high-throughput, mission-critical tasks (e.g., ATM transactions) that PCs cannot handle.
• No Competitive Relationship: Klement emphasizes the JTBD principle: two products are competitors only if a customer switches from one to the other.
  • Customers never chose between a mainframe and a PC.
  • Dr. Norm Agin of Martin Marietta Data Systems stated in 1984 that PCs were for compatibility with existing mainframes and replaced “a calculator and typewriter on [their] desk.”
  • Old PC commercials show them competing with typewriters, personal assistants, calculators, game systems (Atari), and paper-based filing systems, not mainframes. PCs didn’t create a new market from a JTBD perspective; they offered a new alternative within existing markets for productivity tools.
  • PCs were often more expensive than the individual items they replaced (typewriter, calculator, game system), invalidating the “low-end disruptive” narrative for PCs.
• Mainframe Competition Today: Real competition for mainframes has only recently emerged with cloud computing (e.g., Johnson & Johnson switching from mainframes to Amazon, Microsoft, NTT cloud services for scalability and cost). Here, the JTBD shifted from owning a computer to outsourcing everything.
• Reasons for the Mistaken Correlation:
  • Physical Appearance: Both are “computers,” leading to a false assumption of competition.
  • Misunderstanding Variation: Mainframes have long, cyclical sales patterns. Observing a dip in sales might be mistaken for disruption rather than normal market behavior. Correlation (PC sales up, mainframe sales down) does not equal causation.

Don’t Be Fooled by Randomness

Klement critiques “recipes for success” and pseudoscientific innovation theories that offer simplistic formulas.

• Critique of Management Gurus: He cites Phil Rosenzweig’s “The Halo Effect” (criticizing “nine delusions” like attributing success to culture without objective data), Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking, Fast and Slow” (explaining our attraction to simple, striking stories), and Richard Feynman’s “cargo cult science” (warning against unscientific methods).
• These theories often fall victim to “selecting the dependent variable”: only looking for evidence that confirms a hypothesis (e.g., red shorts cause shark attacks) while ignoring contradictory data.
• JTBD’s Empowerment: Klement states that JTBD does not offer plug-and-play success. Instead, it equips innovators with language and principles of customer motivation to create their own strategies. It focuses on:
  • What customers are struggling with.
  • How they imagine their lives being better with the right solution.
  • What they do and don’t value in a solution.
    This empowers innovators to navigate complexity and unpredictability.

Put It to Work

• Don’t restrict competition to products with similar functionality or physical characteristics. Open your mind to unexpected competitors (coffee vs. kale smoothie). Your competitive model must come only from customers.
• Don’t study the relationships among customers, products, and competition just from afar. Talk directly with customers to understand their choices, alternatives, and combinations of solutions.
• Confirm that competition exists between products by finding customers who switched. True competition is evidenced by a customer moving from one solution to another (e.g., smartphone vs. PC – often they’re used together, not as replacements).
• Do you think you’re creating a new market? Think again. Most “new markets” are simply new solutions for existing JTBDs that customers were solving through other means (e.g., laundry machines vs. laundromats). Ensure customers will give up something when they start using your product.
• Know what budget you’re taking away from. This helps gauge revenue potential and investment levels. Dan Martell knew Clarity was taking from conference budgets, not just “talk to an expert” budgets.
• Continually refresh the competitive landscape with ongoing feedback from customers. Customer perception of competition is dynamic. Regularly interview customers about past solutions, considered alternatives, and reasons for switching or quitting.
• Remember that not every JTBD needs to be solved with a product that customers buy. Many customers are fine with “good-enough” free or low-cost solutions (e.g., clay pots for cooling). Don’t waste resources solving problems that customers aren’t willing to pay to solve better.

9 Case Study: Omer and Transcendent Endeavors

This chapter highlights how Omer Yariv applied Customer Jobs principles to create a new product from scratch within the healthcare industry, specifically focusing on preventing adverse events in hospitals. It showcases the disciplined process of identifying intense struggle, uncovering deep emotional motivations, and designing solutions that address unstated needs.

How Customer Jobs Helped Omer Get Started

Omer Yariv, Senior Product Manager at Transcendent Endeavors (TE), was tasked with developing a solution to prevent adverse events (e.g., falls, infections, bedsores) in hospitals. Despite his limited healthcare experience, he was confident in his ability to create a successful product by focusing on finding a group of people struggling intensely to get a Job Done.

• Identifying the “Energy” of Struggle: Omer’s core belief is that finding this “energy” is imperative to discovering a JTBD. He sought out those who had the most to lose from adverse events, the most to gain from preventing them, and were already putting the most effort into finding solutions.
• Narrowing the Focus: Despite adverse events affecting everyone (hospitals, patients, nurses), Omer knew he couldn’t build a solution for all. He looked for the “gap” – why do they still happen if no one wants them? He narrowed his focus to one group suffering the greatest consequences and best positioned to prevent events.
• Surveys to Find High-Struggle Users: He used surveys (asking about field experience, frequency of adverse events, preventability) to identify nurses with high patient turnover who dealt with the most adverse events. This ruled out ICUs and oncology and pointed to medical/surgical nurses (4-5 patients at a time, turning over every few days) as the prime candidates for in-depth interviews.

Discovering the JTBD through Emotional Motivation

Omer’s interviews aimed to understand the struggle and the nurses’ desired “better life.”

• Looking for “Energy” in Interviews: Beyond direct questions, Omer looked for changes in body language, tone, and expressions of frustration. He sought the emotional “energy” signaling a deep-seated desire for change.
• Uncovering the Core Struggle: He discovered a profound emotional struggle: nurses’ fear of liability and social stigma when adverse events occur, even if not their fault (e.g., mis-prescribed medication). They didn’t want to be “that nurse that all the other nurses are talking about.” This fear of unfair blame and damage to their professional reputation was a powerful push.
• The “Why” They Are Nurses: Counterbalancing this struggle was their core motivation: they became nurses “because they feel like they can make a change” and “they’re helping people.” This desire to be helpful was their pull and the envisioned “better life.”
• The JTBD Emerges: Combining the struggle (fear of liability, stigma, unfair blame) and the pull (desire to help, pride in work), Omer had a clear idea of the JTBD: protecting their ability to help patients without fearing unfair consequences.

Valuing Solutions and Identifying Innovation Opportunities

To design the right solution, Omer investigated nurses’ current methods for managing patient information and preventing errors.

• Existing Solutions: Nurses currently relied on memory or personal note-taking methods (iPhone notes, jotting on clipboards, writing on hands). Some used a third-party app called Rover.
• Compensatory Behaviors: A critical insight came from a nurse who started writing notes on her hand, then on a pad, and finally created her own grid-based worksheets to track beds and patients. Other nurses started copying and using these worksheets. This self-made solution and its adoption by peers was a strong signal of an unmet need and a valuable innovation opportunity.
• Designing the Solution: Omer encapsulated struggling moments into “Job stories” to guide development, such as:
  • “When I get my handoff, and I need to remember what I need to do, I want to assign beds and interventions quickly, so I can get back to work and not get bogged down.”
  • “When I finish an intervention, I want to mark it as done quickly so I can make sure I don’t double-administer treatments.”
    These stories ensured the product focused on the specific, high-energy pain points.

What’s the JTBD?

• More about: avoiding adverse events, not being the nurse everyone talks about, losing my nursing license, protecting myself from liability, being unfairly blamed, feeling like I’m helping people, pride in my work as a nurse.
• Less about: protecting the hospital, protecting other nurses (these are systemic outcomes, not the individual nurse’s direct motivation).

A strong JTBD description for these nurses is:
“Arm me with what I need to manage my interventions, so I can focus on helping my patients without fearing unfair blame or professional repercussions.”
This highlights the emotional core (fear, pride) and the desired enablement (focus on helping patients), independent of specific technological solutions. It also subtly points to how systemic issues (hospital liability rules) create these “needs.”

Put It to Work

• Begin by identifying a struggle. Start wide (surveys to all stakeholders) and get progressively narrow (interviews with specific nurse groups). Look for “energy” and intense motivation to change.
• Find innovation opportunities when customers exhibit compensatory behaviors. Actively seek out instances where customers use products in novel ways, combine solutions, or create their own. These “edge cases” reveal the true JTBD and valuable design insights (like the nurse’s homemade worksheet).
• Focus on the consequences of not getting the Job Done. The fear of losing a license or professional stigma are powerful motivators.

This case study is a testament to the power of systematic JTBD research to uncover deeply emotional motivations and design truly impactful solutions, even in complex, unfamiliar domains like healthcare.

10 Case Study: Justin and Product People Club

This chapter delves into the entrepreneurial journey of Justin Jackson, a prolific innovator, focusing on how he used Customer Jobs to identify a critical struggling moment for solo entrepreneurs and build successful products around it, including Product People Club and Marketing for Developers. It showcases the iterative process of discovering, validating, and extending progress for customers.

Discovering a Struggling Moment from Scratch

Justin Jackson, known for his relentless innovation, sought to create a new product out of personal frustration with slow progress in a consulting role. He didn’t have a product idea initially but knew where to look for a struggle: his existing audience of entrepreneurs and innovators.

• Observing Patterns in His Audience: Justin sifted through years of blog comments, newsletter replies, podcast questions, and Twitter complaints. He looked for reoccurring struggling moments that signaled pent-up energy for change.
• Two Key Struggles Emerge:
  • Loneliness/Isolation: Solo entrepreneurs often work alone, feeling isolated, especially in small towns or when discussing their unique challenges with non-entrepreneur spouses/neighbors.
  • Procrastination/Consumption vs. Doing: Many were stuck in a cycle of consuming content (podcasts, blogs) but not actually building or launching their own products. They “wanted to just fucking do it” but felt “stuck.”
• The “Poseur” Anxiety: Underlying these was a fear of being perceived (or perceiving themselves) as poseurs—someone who talks about building but never actually does. This desire to “just do it” became the core push force.

Validating the Opportunity with Product People Club

Justin tested the intensity of this struggle with a minimal viable product.

• Simple Product Test: He created a chat room capped at 12 people, costing $10/month, and a simple promotional webpage. The ad copy directly addressed the loneliness and procrastination of solo entrepreneurship: “tired of building in isolation?” and “stop just consuming, start doing.“
• Immediate Validation: He posted it to Hacker News. The product sold out in 30 minutes, and a waiting list of 400 people quickly formed. This confirmed he had “hit a nerve” and tapped into a significant, unmet JTBD.

Digging Deeper into the Struggle

After initial validation, Justin interviewed his first customers, focusing on “why they joined” and “what was going on in their life when they signed up.”

• Unpacking Isolation: He learned that customers, like a newly unemployed entrepreneur, felt profound isolation, unable to talk to anyone who truly understood the “prelaunch stress.” The JTBD was “Help me manage the feelings of isolation as I start my business.”
• The “Finally! My People!” Pull: Joining PPC gave customers a sense of community, friendship, and human connectedness, easing anxiety and raising confidence. This was the emotional progress they sought.
• Uncovering Revenue Goals: By exploring what other solutions customers had tried (MicroConf, 30×500, Slack communities, coaching, Clarity), Justin found another recurring “Be goal”: the desire for independent income. Customers would say, “I want to do fifty thousand dollars in iOS sales this year.” This wasn’t just about launching a product, but about financial stability and control over their future. This presented a new dimension to the JTBD: “Help me achieve independent income from my products.”

Extending Progress and Creating New Products

Justin’s deep understanding of his customers’ evolving JTBD led him to create complementary products rather than simply adding features.

• “What Comes Next?”: Justin anticipated the next struggle for his customers: marketing and launching their products after overcoming isolation and building confidence.
• Marketing for Developers: Instead of bloating PPC, he created an entirely new product: Marketing for Developers (a combination of videos, books, worksheets, templates). This served a related but distinct JTBD: “Help me successfully launch and promote my newly built product.” This demonstrates the power of a system of products to deliver ongoing progress.
• Tracking Goals: He also identified a need to help customers track their revenue goals, building a feature into PPC that allowed them to “measure their success as they strive to have completely independent income.” This directly addressed the “independent income” JTBD.
• Anticipating Future Struggles: Justin continues to look for new struggles (e.g., “big companies sustaining innovation,” “release management”) that his audience will face as they progress, hinting at future product opportunities.

What’s the JTBD?

• Quotes: “Having the right people to talk with helped eased their anxiety and raised their confidence. It’s that sense of community, friendship, relationship, and human connectedness.” and “Oh, finally! These are my people! These are people I can talk to about what it is like to have prelaunch stress!”
• More about: loneliness and isolation of solopreneurship, sense of community and human connectedness, keeping your motivation up, not feeling like or being perceived as a poseur, “just do it,” I’ll have the confidence to persist in being an entrepreneur.
• Less about: attending a conference, taking a class on entrepreneurship, talking with a mentor (these are solutions or activities).

A strong JTBD for Product People Club:
“Help me overcome the isolation and stress of solopreneurship, so I can have the motivation and confidence to finish and launch my product.”
This captures the emotional struggle and the desired state of progress.

Put It to Work

• Innovation opportunities are found through looking for specific data. Actively investigate customer complaints, repeated questions, and unprompted discussions. Look for “special causes” of variation (e.g., unusual product usage).
• Know the difference between a struggling customer and a merely inconvenienced customer. Look for “true struggle” where customers are putting significant energy into finding a solution. Justin’s customers were reaching out for help, not just mildly annoyed.
• Great advertising comes from speaking to the customers’ struggling moment. PPC’s success stemmed from its simple promotional page that directly addressed loneliness and procrastination, showing how the product would make their lives better.
• Digging deep into customer motivation reveals innovation opportunities. Don’t settle for superficial insights. Continuously ask “why” to uncover the full context of the struggle and how the customer imagines a better life.
• You can deliver progress to your customers’ JTBD by offering a set of products that work together as a system. Instead of bloating a single product, create complementary products that address subsequent JTBDs that arise as customers make progress (e.g., PPC for launching, Marketing for Developers for promotion). This avoids the “Swiss Army knife” problem and maintains product focus.

11 The System of Progress

This chapter introduces the profound concept of the System of Progress, a holistic view of how customers, products, and producers are interconnected in a dynamic, evolving dance. Klement argues that truly innovative companies don’t just optimize individual product features; they understand and improve the entire system to deliver continuous customer progress.

Why Study Systems and The System of Progress?

Klement highlights the power of systems thinking, which helped Japan create successful products after WWII and revived Ford with the Taurus.

• Interdependence: A core principle of systems is that all parts are connected; changes in one area affect others (“something over ‘here’ affects something over ‘there’”). Examples: Dan Martell realizing Clarity impacted airline/hotel profits, Anthony Francavilla finding selective discounts boosted theater sales, and Morgan Ranieri reducing churn by helping customers meal plan.
• The System of Progress: This model helps understand the interdependencies between customer demand and the producer. Its goal is not to optimize individual parts, but how those parts work together to deliver progress. A mediocre, available product beats a perfect, unknown one.

Interdependencies Between Customers and Producers

The System of Progress is split into two hemispheres:

• Top (Customer’s Mind): Describes customer demand as a JTBD. The customer defines their struggle and desired transformation (“new me”). Producers can influence this, but not define it.
• Bottom (Producer’s Interaction): Describes the producer’s interaction with that demand. This is where products are created and meet demand.

The System’s Four Main Parts

Klement breaks down the System of Progress into four interconnected stages:

• 1. The Customer Imagines a Better Life-Situation (a New Me):
  • This is the origin of the JTBD, driven by push (getting away from something disliked) and pull (growing in a new way).
  • The JTBD arises when customers realize they can’t achieve this “new me” on their own due to constraints.
  • Innovator’s Role: Understand how, when, and why customers realize they need to change (e.g., lifestyle changes, dissatisfaction with old solutions).
• 2. The Customer Searches for and Chooses a Solution:
  • This is the first point of contact between producer and customer.
  • Richest data source: Customers are actively visualizing how life will be better, evaluating solutions, and calculating how a solution will bridge their current state to their “new me.”
  • Innovator’s Role: Understand what customers value, their priorities (e.g., convenience vs. quality for YourGrocer), and their “hiring criteria.” Marketers connect with customers here, helping them choose the product. Understand why they’re searching now, what trade-offs they’re willing to make, and what alternatives they tried.
• 3. The Customer Uses a Solution to Start Making Progress:
  • Engineers and designers create the product based on the understanding of the JTBD and customer values.
  • Innovator’s Role: Monitor and improve the solution by observing how customers use it. Do they use all of it? Do they combine it with other solutions? Are they using it in unintended ways (compensatory behaviors)?
• 4. The Customer Realizes a New Me:
  • The Job is Done if the “better life” happens. If not, the struggle continues, leading to continued search or compensatory behaviors.
  • Innovator’s Role: Ensure the product consistently delivers the desired transformation.

The Forces of Progress That Power the System of Progress

The four forces (Push, Pull, Inertia, Anxiety) act as the engine that speed up or slow down a customer’s movement through the System of Progress. They are represented by dotted lines in the diagram, constantly influencing the customer’s journey.

The System of Progress Is Continuous

This is a crucial concept: the system is a helix (spiral), not a flat circle, because customer evolution is continuous.

• New Aspirations Arise: When customers overcome one JTBD, new aspirations often emerge. Examples: buying a car leads to needing help with road trips or insurance; professional pans lead to curiosity about new techniques; a smartphone camera leads to desires for social sharing and photo organization.
• Perpetual Progress: The expanding radius of the spiral represents customers making progress, continually driven forward. The system demonstrates how a constellation of solutions can work together, or in sequence, to deliver ongoing progress.
• Evolving Customer Journey: Klement illustrates this with an entrepreneur’s journey:
  • Struggles with isolation -> hires Product People Club.
  • Doubts business model -> hires Clarity.
  • Needs to retool model -> hires Lean Stack (Lean Canvas).
  • Needs marketing help -> hires Marketing for Developers.
  • Needs to validate hypotheses -> hires Lean Stack (Validation Plan, Experiment Report).
    This sequence shows how different products address evolving JTBDs, propelling the customer toward the higher-level JTBD of “becoming a successful entrepreneur.”
• Tim Zenderman’s BananaDesk Example (Hostel Growth Stages): Hostel owners go through stages of growth, each with different JTBDs and appropriate solutions:
  • Survive: Drive guests (e.g., manual booking websites).
  • Control: Reservations: Overcome overbooking (e.g., BananaDesk’s basic reservation management).
  • Control: Finance: Manage cash flow, profitability.
  • Scale: Revenue management, franchising, direct marketing (to lower acquisition costs).
    A product might be a bad fit for one stage but perfect for another (e.g., direct marketing is bad for “survive” but great for “scale”). The context of the “need” defines the best solution.

Is the System of Progress New?

Klement acknowledges that the helical concept isn’t entirely new. It builds on Walter A. Shewhart’s cycle (continual production improvement) and W. Edwards Deming’s PDSA cycle (Plan-Do-Study-Act). While Shewhart and Deming focused on improving product quality, the System of Progress focuses on continually improving customers’ lives through increased knowledge of their desires, how they find/use solutions, and how they make progress.

Put It to Work

• Grow your business by unlocking new aspirations and offering products for them. Anticipate customers’ next struggles as they make progress (e.g., Justin’s Marketing for Developers after Product People Club; Ash’s Validation Plan after Lean Canvas).
• Think of your business as delivering a combination of products that work together to forward the system of progress. Your products are touch points. The iPhone succeeded with the App Store; Apple now focuses on services as hardware sales slow. DeWalt provides a “constellation of products” for contractors to maintain successful careers. Innovation success comes from understanding how these parts work together.
• Identify parts of the system that your business hasn’t considered or is overvaluing. Avoid common pitfalls like over-relying on customer stated preferences. Instead, identify missing data or overvalued data. Don’t throw out your existing processes, but adjust them to align with the system of progress.
• Find product opportunities by looking forward and backward on the system of progress.
  • “What comes after?”: Like Justin and Ash, anticipate the next JTBD customers will face.
  • “What comes before?”: Klement’s own Aim product (advertising platform) was born from realizing mortgage bankers’ bigger struggle was finding leads before processing applications. Solving the prior struggle had greater profit potential.

12 Innovation and the System of Progress

This chapter synthesizes the core message of the book: true innovation lies in understanding and improving the entire System of Progress, not just individual products or customer “needs.” Klement challenges conventional wisdom, emphasizing that customers don’t fully understand the system they’re in, and therefore, innovators must go beyond stated preferences to drive meaningful change.

The Customer Does Not Understand the System

Klement starts with a provocative premise: “Any innovative company struggles with how much to listen to customers. Most realize that you cannot trust them to tell you what your next new product will be.”

• The Paradox of Customer Input: He highlights the success of Spirit Airlines and Ryanair, consistently ranked as “most-hated” but staggeringly profitable. If customers “hate” them, why do they keep buying? Similarly, Steve Ballmer’s dismissal of the iPhone (too expensive, no keyboard) proved disastrous, while Steve Jobs’s “It isn’t the consumer’s job to know what they want” led to world-changing innovations. Dr. Deming also stated, “The customer invents nothing. The customer does not contribute to the design of the product. He takes what he gets.”
• Symptoms vs. Problems: Klement uses the analogy of a doctor treating a fever and stomachache (symptoms) versus diagnosing an intestinal infection (the underlying problem). Similarly, customer “needs, wants, and desired outcomes” are often just symptoms of their interaction with the System of Progress, not the root problem.
• Systemic Influence on “Needs”: Customers’ stated preferences are unreliable and constantly change because they are shaped by the system itself. If Spirit Airlines offered free sodas, costs would rise, and low prices would disappear, changing what customers “want.” Yesterday’s demand for gaslight mantles changed to CFLs because the system changed.
• Innovator’s Responsibility: Innovators must understand that customers “know only what the system tells them.” They know their struggles and how they imagine a better life, but they lack the holistic knowledge of marketing, design, engineering, costs, and systems thinking to articulate the solution. The innovator’s job is to make car ownership obsolete in NYC by offering services like Uber, not just to find more parking.

Improving Interdependencies Within the System

True improvement comes from optimizing how the parts of the system work together, not just optimizing individual parts in isolation.

• Joanna Wiebe: Copywriting as System Improvement: Beachway Therapy Center had a great product (addiction treatment) but poor sales. Joanna’s copywriting changes (“If you think you need rehab, you do,” “Does my insurance cover this?”) directly addressed customers’ anxiety-in-choice, making it easier for them to find and choose the solution, leading to a 26% increase in leads worth $20,000/month. This improved the interaction between the clinic and the customer’s decision process, not the clinic itself.
• Alan Klement: Training Platform for Software Adoption: For FDT software with low adoption among some customers, Klement’s team didn’t change the core product. Instead, they created a video-training platform to reduce anxiety and inertia for new users, significantly increasing sales. This improved the usage stage of the system.
• Bob Moesta: Homes for Empty Nesters: Bob’s home-building business initially failed to sell homes to empty nesters who “wanted” smaller dining rooms and larger second bedrooms. Bob discovered their sentimental attachment to their family-size dining tables. When he shrank the second bedroom and expanded the dining room to accommodate the table, and put a large table in the demo home, sales increased by 23%. This revealed that stated preferences are unreliable and customers cannot anticipate future emotional barriers (inertia). Bob improved the system by designing for the actual emotional JTBD, not just stated needs.

When a System’s Interdependencies Change

Systems are dynamic. Innovators must adapt to these changes.

• Adapting Existing Products: Klement’s FDT software had a healthy sync with customers publishing games on websites. When smartphones emerged, customers desired publishing games on mobile, breaking the sync. FDT adapted its product to meet this new demand.
• When Preferred Solutions Disappear: Klement’s Aim platform was born from a legal disruption in 2010 that made the traditional relationship between real estate brokers and mortgage bankers (for lead generation) illegal. Mortgage bankers’ preferred solution for their JTBD disappeared, sending them “back to the beginning” of the system to find new solutions. Aim filled this new vacuum, even though customers were initially apprehensive about a new way of working.

Fragile Interdependencies and Cascade Effects

These characteristics make products vulnerable to creative destruction.

• Fragile Interdependencies: When a product is tightly coupled to a single, vulnerable technology or market. Klement downsized and eventually “fired himself” from FDT because its success was tied to Adobe Flash, which was in irreversible decline. This made the product vulnerable. Similarly, smartphone makers relying solely on Android OS create a fragile dependency, as a flaw in Android affects all their devices.
• Cascade Effects: When one change in a system triggers a chain reaction of other changes, often non-linearly.
  • Gravity (Movie Analogy): A satellite destruction leads to cascading debris, destroying more satellites and stranding the astronaut.
  • Kodak’s Decline: Not just film to digital cameras, but also digital cameras to smartphone cameras, then physical prints to digital sharing (email, social networks), then images to video. Each change cascaded, making Kodak’s original system obsolete.
  • Smartphones: Caused widespread cascade effects, disrupting not just phones but gaming devices, navigation, fitness trackers, calculators, etc.
  • India Example: Smartphone adoption in India leads consumers to prioritize data services over physical goods like hair conditioner sachets, illustrating how a distant change can affect seemingly unrelated markets.
  • Cascade effects are nearly impossible to predict (e.g., urban sprawl from cars), but understanding fragile interdependencies helps in planning.

JTBD Empowers Us to Innovate

JTBD provides language and principles for creating innovation strategies in a complex world, rather than offering rigid recipes.

• Diverse Paths to Success:
  • Continual improvement of high-margin products (IBM mainframes).
  • Feature-minimal, low-cost products (Spirit Airlines).
  • Products that replace both more and less expensive alternatives (PC replacing accountants and typewriters).
  • Minor tweaks to help customer usage (Klement’s FDT training platform).
  • Marketing changes to help customers find existing products (Joanna Wiebe).
  • Developing new products that help customers evolve (Ash Maurya, Justin Jackson).
• Four Core Points:
  1. All customers want to make progress within the systems they belong to.
  2. Customers, producers, innovators, and products are all parts of a system.
  3. Understanding the system comes from studying the interdependencies between parts, not the parts in isolation.
  4. Each system is unique, so solutions must be unique.

Put It to Work

• Persuade customers to reject their current products by changing their JTBD. Don’t just promote features; convince customers of a new, rewarding Job they can achieve (e.g., selling a large grill by convincing customers of the reward of hosting big parties). This shifts their perception of desired progress.
• Bring focus to which system of progress you’re solving for by splitting up products that deliver different types of progress. Like Black+Decker splitting into B&D (homeowners) and DeWalt (professional contractors), focus ensures a product doesn’t become a “Swiss Army knife” trying to solve too many Jobs poorly, increasing vulnerability.

This chapter culminates Klement’s argument that mastering JTBD is about seeing the bigger picture: the dynamic system of progress and the innovator’s role in guiding customers through their evolutionary journey.

13 HOW MIGHT WE DESCRIBE A JOB TO BE DONE?

This chapter focuses on the practical skill of articulating a Job to be Done (JTBD), emphasizing its role as a “big picture” framework that unifies teams and balances creativity with clear boundaries. Klement provides a template and an example from Honest products, encouraging readers to practice their own JTBD descriptions.

Try It Yourself

Klement sets up a scenario for readers to try describing a JTBD based on his research into Honest, a company selling all-natural household and childcare products.

• Honest’s Products: A wide range of products (soaps, cleaners, diapers, baby food) marketed as creating a safe, clean, nutritious, toxin-free environment for children. They also offer by-mail subscriptions for product bundles.
• Understanding the Customer’s Current Life-Situation:
  • Target Customers: Parents who recently had their first child, and parents with children having environmental sensitivities.
  • The Struggle: Both groups felt overwhelmed, tired, and scared by the search for child-safe products. They received conflicting advice from parents, friends, doctors, and the Internet, leading to confusion and arguments between couples.
  • Struggling Moments: Examples include:
    • “Are there any chemicals in this baby formula that will harm my child?”
    • “Is my child getting all the necessary nutrients?”
    • “Does my floor cleaner have chemicals that will give my baby a rash? It doesn’t specifically say it’s safe for babies.”
    • “I found a safe cleaner, but what about soap, shampoo, wipes?”
    • “My baby touches everything. What germs/chemicals do I worry about?”
    • “Is this sunscreen working, or is it an allergic reaction? Information sources conflict.”
• Discovering How Life Should Be: Parents consistently imagined a better life where:
  • The joy of parenthood was restored/increased, with energy to enjoy being parents.
  • They would get along better with spouses, avoiding arguments over product safety and choices.
• What Was Fired?: When parents started using Honest products, they stopped:
  • Combining multiple competing brands (Huggies, Earth’s Best, Seventh Generation).
  • Excessively seeking advice from diverse, conflicting sources (family, friends, doctors, Internet groups).
  • This indicates that Honest effectively replaced these previous, fragmented solutions.

Describing A JTBD

Klement provides his preferred JTBD description for Honest’s customers:
“Free me from the stress I deal with when figuring out what products won’t harm my children, so I can have more time to enjoy being a parent.”

• Two Parts: This structure combines the struggle (“Free me from the stress…”) with the desired outcome/progress (“so I can have more time to enjoy being a parent”).
• Action-Oriented Phrases: He favors phrases like “give me,” “help me,” “make the,” “take away,” “free me,” or “equip me,” as they emphasize the customer’s active pursuit of progress.
• Variations of Wording:
  • Reverse it: “Help me have more time to enjoy being a parent, by taking away the stress I deal with when figuring out what products won’t harm my children.”
  • Third person: “Free parents from the stress they deal with when figuring out what products won’t harm their children, so they can have more time to enjoy being parents.”
• Testing the JTBD: The crucial test is whether the JTBD also describes the solutions it replaced. The Honest JTBD holds up: parents stopped constant research and combining brands when they hired Honest. Klement shares an example of a parent who used Honest sunscreen but then had to revert to old research behaviors when it caused hives, demonstrating that the JTBD is dynamic.
• High-Level JTBD: Klement notes that this is a high-level JTBD, and Honest appeals to parents hiring the brand for peace of mind, not just individual products. The product bundles are genius because they tell parents, “you don’t need to think; Honest will take care of it.” This shows how Honest acts as a system of products delivering progress.
• Competitive Advantage: How you describe a JTBD is a competitive advantage. There’s no single “right” way; the goal is a description that helps the team work together, describes a “better me,” and avoids being product-centric.

This chapter provides a concrete methodology for articulating a JTBD, emphasizing the importance of clearly defining the customer’s struggle and desired future state, and verifying it against what customers actually stop doing.

14 GET STARTED TODAY

This final practical chapter guides readers on how to integrate Customer Jobs thinking into their own work and organizations. Klement acknowledges that the approach varies based on influence and context, offering actionable advice for influencing colleagues, learning from others, and staying connected to the JTBD community.

Influencing Others: Customer Jobs Top Down

For those with leadership influence, Klement suggests:

• Be a practitioner first: Like Dan Martell (Clarity), apply JTBD principles successfully yourself (e.g., by interviewing customers and understanding their JTBDs) before trying to involve the whole team. Once successful, explain the high-level concept, provide tools, and then interview customers together.
• Insist on JTBD research when starting a company: Morgan Ranieri’s cofounder, Frankie Trindade, insisted on JTBD research before writing any software. This ensured alignment and a strong foundation for the business from the outset.
• “Just do it,” but separate data from synthesis: Klement, as a product manager, applied JTBD thinking without explicit permission from his CEO. He gathered data, distilled JTBDs, and presented findings (e.g., Job Stories) to the team, ensuring his raw data was separate from his interpretations. This allowed the team to debate findings and subtly adopt JTBD language and principles without a formal mandate.

Influencing Others: Customer Jobs Bottom Up

For those with less formal authority, Klement offers advice from other practitioners:

• Create a Customer Jobs themed Meetup (David Wu’s example at Meetup.com):
  • David started by interviewing customers himself after usability tests, focusing on their first/last use and past solutions.
  • He invited his team to join, and they quickly saw the value in understanding the “desire for self-betterment.”
  • To influence the wider company, he gave a lunchtime presentation titled “Why People Fire Meetup,” showing pictures of churned customers with quotes about their anxieties (e.g., first-time attending, organizers planning). This generated positive energy and ideas, organically leading to the adoption of JTBD principles.
• Customer Jobs thinking starts with ideas you can test (Dan Ritzenthaler’s example):
  • Acknowledge teammates’ intuition/anecdotal data first.
  • Reframe their hypotheses into a testable JTBD format:
    1. How are customers currently struggling?
    2. What’s pushing them to need a new solution?
    3. Without describing the feature, how will their life be better once it exists?
    4. What’s preventing adoption?
  • Then, ask “Can I go check this out with a few customers?” This positions research as “consumer research” or “due diligence,” which is less intimidating than a “new process framework.” Over time, teammates will see the value and request JTBD interviews proactively.

Learning Customer Jobs from Others

Klement addresses the fragmented nature of JTBD theory due to its organic evolution.

• Fragmentation: JTBD started with Bob Moesta, John Palmer, and Richard Pedi, then was loosely introduced by Clayton Christensen. Its spread was like a “telephone game,” leading to divergent interpretations. Even the originators’ ideas have diverged.
• Advice: Klement advises against worrying about the “right” version. Instead, “pick and choose whatever parts help you” but stick closely to the reliable principles and theory outlined in this book. The goal is progress, not strict adherence to one interpretation.

JTBD.INFO and Contacting Alan Klement

• JTBD.INFO: Klement maintains a collection of JTBD articles and encourages readers to submit their own stories, insights, or ideas for improving the theory. Submissions are welcome as long as they are original, well-formed, and supported.
• Customer Jobs Meetups: He cohosts the NYC JTBD Meetup, emphasizing its value for discussion and sharing. He encourages starting informal community gatherings to build interest before formal Meetups.
• Contacting Alan: He invites readers to contact him via his website (alanklement.com), Twitter (@alanklement), or jtbd.info for questions, comments, help, or to share their own JTBD stories. He aims to help “however I can” and connects people with others if he can’t directly assist.

15 APPENDIX: KNOW THE TWO — VERY — DIFFERENT INTERPRETATIONS OF JOBS TO BE DONE

This appendix, originally a blog post, is included to clarify the two distinct and incompatible interpretations of Jobs to be Done, addressing common confusion and misattributions within the field.

Two Models: Jobs-As-Progress; Jobs-As-Activities

Klement identifies the two main interpretations:

• Jobs-As-Progress: Promoted by Clayton Christensen, Bob Moesta, and Alan Klement. This model focuses on the desired transformation (Revlon: “sell hope”).
• Jobs-As-Activities: Promoted by Anthony Ulwick and his Outcome Driven Innovation licensees. This model focuses on tasks or use-cases (McGinneva: “quarter-inch holes”).

Do Goals vs. Be Goals

Klement uses William Powers’ hierarchy of goals (1973) as a crucial model to differentiate:

• Be Goals (Principles): Highest priority, stable, emotional (e.g., “be a thoughtful parent,” “feel safe”). These are the ultimate motivators. Fulfillment of a Be goal is not dependent on the success of lower-level goals. They can even be fulfilled without any action (e.g., feeling safer due to increased police patrols).
• Do Goals (Programs): Mid-level, transient, functional activities (e.g., “cook dinner,” “listen to music”). These are chosen to fulfill Be goals.
• Motor Control Goals (Sequences): Lowest-level, specific physical actions (e.g., “chop vegetables,” “press play”).
  The key takeaway is that high-level goals don’t need low-level goals, but low-level goals need high-level goals. People ultimately want the Be goals, not the Do or Motor goals.

Jobs-As-Activities

• Definition: Ulwick defines JTBD as “A task, goal or objective a person is trying to accomplish or a problem they are trying to resolve.” These are described through a Job Map (define, locate, prepare, confirm, execute, monitor, modify, conclude).
• Focus: Sees functional jobs as the “anchor” around which emotional and social jobs are defined. Examples: “listen to music,” “drill a quarter-inch hole.”
• Relation to Powers’ Model: JTBD in this interpretation aligns with Program (Do) goals made up of Motor Control goals.
• Similarities to Existing Methodologies: Klement points out that Jobs-As-Activities is very similar to Goal-Directed Design, Cognitive Task Analysis, HCI, Use Cases, and Activity-Centered Design. Ulwick’s Job Map is strikingly similar to Don Norman’s Seven Stages of Action. This is why many claim JTBD is “nothing new” when encountering this interpretation.
• Business Strategy: Ulwick’s ideology suggests businesses should help customers “get a job done better (faster, more predictably, with higher output) and / or more cheaply.”

Jobs-As-Progress

• Definition: “the progress that a person is trying to make in a particular circumstance” (Christensen 2016) or “the process a consumer goes through whenever she aims to transform her existing life-situation into a preferred one but cannot because constraints are stopping her” (Klement 2016).
• Focus: Aims to understand why consumers change their historical purchase patterns (e.g., stop using product X and start using product Y). It’s about unattained Be goals.
• Innovation Implication: This model suggests that innovation is often about eliminating tasks and activities, not just improving them (e.g., IKEA furniture eliminating the need to “cut a straight line,” or TaskRabbit eliminating the need to “assemble furniture”). Customers want the result (an organized home), not the activity.
• Competition: Because customers seek Be goals, they consider products with wildly different functionalities as competition (e.g., Clarity vs. conferences for “being inspired”).
• Theoretical Basis: Draws from control theory (Norbert Wiener), cognitive science (Herbert Simon, Albert Bandura, William Powers), focusing on humans as goal-directed organisms regulating discrepancies via feedback loops.

Two Different, Incompatible Models

Klement explicitly states these two interpretations are “two different, and incompatible” views.

• Jobs-As-Activities focuses on improving the activity itself.
• Jobs-As-Progress focuses on regulating Be goal discrepancies, often by eliminating the need for certain activities altogether. Norman’s extension of Levitt’s drill example (“Why not develop methods that don’t require holes?”) perfectly captures this difference.

Challenges in Understanding a Tangled Mess

• Misattributions: Klement points out that many repeat inaccurate historical accounts of JTBD, such as Alex Osterwalder’s list of originators, which conflates different thinkers and their ideas.
• Repeating Nascent/Passing Ideas: Concepts like “functional, social, and emotional jobs” are repeated without evidence or theoretical basis, based on a single line in Christensen’s 2003 book. This is an “Argumentum ad Populum” fallacy.

The Future? Use What’s Helpful. Don’t Assume Anything

Klement concludes by advising readers to remain pragmatic, use what they find helpful, and be skeptical. The ultimate goal is to “be great at making products that people will buy,” and the rest is merely a means to that end.

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Key Takeaways

Alan Klement’s “When Coffee and Kale Compete” fundamentally reorients our understanding of innovation, shifting the focus from products and features to the core human desire for progress and self-betterment. The book’s most important insights are:

• Customers “hire” products to make progress in their lives, not for the products themselves. This progress is about transforming their existing life situation into a preferred one, addressing deep emotional needs and aspirations (Be Goals), not just performing tasks or activities (Do Goals).
• Competition is defined in the mind of the customer and is far broader than functionally similar products. Unexpected alternatives (like coffee and kale smoothies, or mainframes and cloud services) can compete for the same Job to be Done. Ignoring this leads to costly failures like the chotuKool.
• Innovation is about improving the entire “System of Progress,” not just individual product features. This system involves the interconnectedness of customers, producers, and products, influenced by forces of Push, Pull, Inertia, and Anxiety. Understanding these interdependencies allows for holistic improvements that drive sustainable growth.
• Customer stated preferences (“needs,” “wants”) are often unreliable symptoms, not root problems. Innovators must go beyond what customers say they want and instead observe their struggles, compensatory behaviors, and emotional motivations to design solutions that enable progress, even if customers couldn’t articulate the solution themselves.
• Great innovation often eliminates the need for tasks or helps customers overcome anxieties and habits. This is achieved by delivering genuine emotional progress that frees up time, reduces stress, or builds confidence.

Next Actions:

• Reframe your problem-solving: For any product or feature, ask “What Job to be Done (what desired transformation/progress) is the customer hiring this for?” Focus on their emotional motivations (Be Goals).
• Map the competitive landscape from the customer’s perspective: Identify what customers stop doing when they start using your product. Interview customers about their past solutions, alternatives considered, and what trade-offs they made.
• Identify and address the “silent competitors” – inertia and anxiety: Actively research what prevents customers from trying or continuing to use your product, then design solutions to overcome these barriers.
• Think in systems, not just products: Consider how your product fits into the broader system of your customer’s life. Ask “What comes before?” and “What comes after?” their use of your product to uncover new innovation opportunities and deliver continuous progress.

Reflection Prompts:

• Considering your most successful product or service, what deep emotional “Job” (Be Goal) do you believe your customers are truly hiring it for, beyond its functional attributes?
• What are the “silent competitors” (inertia, anxiety, or existing compensatory behaviors) that prevent potential customers from choosing your solution, even if they express interest?
• How might you reframe your product’s value proposition to speak directly to the customer’s desired progress and the “new me” they aspire to become?