Original Post:
Market Approach
PMF View: Emphasizes identifying large existing markets with current needs.
JTBD Counter-argument #1
Defines markets by jobs-to-be-done, not existing product categories.
JTBD fundamentally redefines how we conceptualize markets. Instead of segmenting markets based on product categories or demographic characteristics, JTBD focuses on the underlying job that customers are trying to accomplish. This shift in perspective allows companies to identify opportunities that transcend traditional market boundaries.
For example, instead of seeing a market for "smartphones," JTBD might identify a market for "communicating with others while on the go." And this is only one market that a smartphone platform can enable (e.g., tasks on the go, scheduling on the go, news on the go, music on the go, etc.). This job-centric definition opens up possibilities for innovative solutions that may not fit neatly into existing product categories but directly address the core customer need.
Customer-Centric Market View
All industries drive to zero. I don’t know who said that, but it has stuck with me, because it’s true. Entrenched incumbents tend to milk their customer base by adding features for cohorts of lead users. Users that do not represent the vast majority of the market. As a result, these companies add cost and complexity to an existing product that either…
severely overserves most of the market
misses non-traditional competitors who are threatening to make them irrelevant
It’s one thing to say you listen to customers, but are you listening to the right customers? Are you listening to them in the right context? These important questions are answered by JTBD practitioners.
Customer-Centricity has very little to do with the customer. It has everything to do with helping a group of people (customers and non-customers) get a job done completely, effectively, and quickly on a single platform.
Most products only get a small part of that job done.
Stable Innovation Framework
Many, if not most, of you have been a part of corporate environments that are so busy keeping up with their day-to-day that they lose sight of what’s important. You have to chase constant change because the competition (the visible competition) never gives up. You’re constantly chasing the leaders and/or playing leap frog.
Meanwhile, all of you are failing to see potential threat(s) from non-traditional competitors who are operating in an adjacent step (or mini-job) because you don’t really see that higher context objective of customers. These threats can be…
Scavengers - they see emergent technology that may have been developed by someone else and exploit it. This is what happened to Kodak. They developed digital photography but couldn’t allow their film and processing business to be disrupted.
Creative Mavericks - these people just think differently about how things could be. They refuse to live within the constraints of current business models and find ways to deliver services in a completely new way that unbinds them from the constraints of incumbents. Air BnB and Uber come to mind. They get the same jobs done as their counterparts, but they address more scenarios (and a broader job context for service provision), and are scalable due to their freedom from investing in expensive physical assets. They simply utilize excess capacity from idle asset owners.
Cross-Industry Insights
Let’s talk about non-traditional competitors, shall we? If you are focused on making circular saws, who are your competitors? Other circular saw makers? Sure. But also handsaws, and other contraptions you can use that are less automatic, or more capable…such as a miter saw.
While Bosch was able to gain a foothold in the North American circular saw market over 20 years ago using a Jobs-to-be-Done study, there is only so much value you can eek out of these studies once the value gaps around current solutions begin to disappear.
So, what do you do?
The first thing we can do is look at Related Jobs. They are extremely powerful indicators that adjacencies exist around the current job(s) a circular saw enables. This is a first step in elevating your thinking to a higher context.
Take all of these related jobs and attempt to organize them using the 8-9 universal phases of JTBD
Define
Locate
Prepare
Confirm
Execute
Monitor
Modify
Resolve (services)
Conclude
Once you’ve done that, you can ask yourself, “Self, do these represent steps in a higher context job? And how would I describe that job?”
The answer to those questions will take you to a higher plane of existence. No trip to Tibet needed!
When you go through the exercise of identifying all of the brands playing in those spaces, those are your non-traditional competitors operating in different parts of the higher-context job. Since customers like solutions that get the entire job done on a single platform, you need to ask yourself, “do I need to stop thinking in terms of my current solution?”
Effort-Focused Market Sizing
Size Matters
Traditional market-sizing requires that there be a solution, a real or estimated (guess) number of users, and a price that people are willing to pay. In a real scenario, a new entrant (into an existing market) needs to assume they can steal customers, or that they can somehow attract non-consumers (usually a disruption play and not an existing market). Many times that’s at the expense of price since non-consumers are either overwhelmed by features and complexity relative to their need, or they can’t afford the solution given what it can provide them.
Let’s focus on the hammer market. How large is that? How many people use hammers, and what is the average price? How often to they need to be replaced? As an innovator, is that how want to assess your potential?
Probably not. Yet, that’s what Venture Capitalists seem to promote since PMF is broadly defined in terms of existing markets (for some strange reason).
A better way to innovate and also calculate potential market size is to rid yourself of product-think. Instead, think in terms of how you’re help a group of people (potential customers) get a job done better than before. Ideally, you take your gaze up a level and look at the related objectives they have and design a solution (or platform) that helps them achieve all of those objectives without having to cobble things together like their doing today.
Looking at the hammer is the wrong lens. Understanding that they might be constructing something (a deck, a closet, a house) is the proper lens because if you can provide a solution to building a house that uses fewer people, requires less expertise, requires fewer tools and resources you just might find a break through innovation.
How many people would value such a platform?
How much would they be willing to pay?
How frequently do they build houses?
Yes, this is a much better way to size your opportunities!
Market Approach: The PMF Counter Argument #1