Clay Christensen: The Jobs to be Done Theory

To give you an illustration of how we develop this in a deeper way, McDonald's approached us. And McDonald's is a very sophisticated marketing company and they have data up the gazoo. And they decided that they needed to innovate in their milkshake product line so that more people will buy milkshakes. And they had data that allowed them to draw a quintessential customer of milkshakes, milkshake customers. And they then would identify this profile of a milkshake customer. It turns out I fit that profile very well. They would then invite people who hit the profile into conference rooms and they'd ask them questions, trying to understand, how could we improve the milkshake so you'll buy more of them? And they'd get very clear feedback. They would then improve the milkshake on those dimensions of performance, and it had no impact on sales or profits whatsoever. So we invited ourselves and they agreed that we could try to approach it in a very different way. And that is, you know, there's a job out there somewhere that arises in people's life on occasion that causes them to need to buy a milkshake. And we need to understand what the job is that causes people to buy a milkshake. And so one of our colleagues stood in a McDonald's restaurant for 18 hours one day and just took very careful notes on what time did he buy the milkshake, what was he wearing, was he alone or with other people? Did he buy other food with it or just the milkshake and did he eat it in the restaurant or did he go off in the car and take off? It turned out that about half of the milkshakes were sold before 8:30 in the morning. It was the only thing they bought. They were always alone and they always got in the car and drove off with it. So we came the next morning and confronted and positioned ourselves outside the restaurant so that we could confront these people as they were emerging with their milkshake. And in language that they could better understand, we asked them, excuse me, you're creating real trouble for me because I. Can you explain what job arose in your life that caused you to come here at 6:30 in the morning to hire a milkshake to get this, what's the job to be done here? As they would struggle to answer why they came at 6:30, we'd ask them, step back a minute and think about the last situation in which you had the same situation, needing to get the same job done. But you didn't come here to hire a milkshake from McDonald's. What did you hire to get the job done? And one guy said, yeah, I hire donuts to do the job, but I can never hire just one. And another guy said, I do bagels, you know, but boy, they're dry and they're tasteless. And so I have to put creme cheese on and steer the car with my knees while I'm putting cream cheese on. And it turns out one of them said, you know, I hired a Snickers bar to do the job, but I felt so guilty, I've never hired Snickers again. And one guy said, you know, I never thought about it before, but last Friday I hired a banana to do the job. But it doesn't do the job very well at all. You finish it in less than a minute. But let me tell you, when I go to McDonald's, it is so viscous, it takes me about 23 minutes to suck it up that thin little straw. And I don't care what the ingredients are. All I know is that when 10 o' clock comes, I'm still full. And the job that all of these people were trying to get done was I have a long and boring drive to work, and I needed something that would just keep me engaged with life while I'm driving the car. I'm not hungry yet, but I know I'll be hungry by 10 o'. Clock. So I also, part of the job is I need something to eat that would keep myself full when 10 o' clock happens. And that's the job that they're hiring the milkshake to do. That is they have a long and boring drive to work and they needed to add dimensions of it to keep them engaged with life. And from the customer's point of view, the milkshake does the job better than any of the competitors. And the competitors from the customer's point of view are not just in the product category, but they draw from bananas and donuts and bagels, as I mentioned. And so when you think about how big the job is, you have to look at who the real competitors are from the customer's point of view. And they come from very different categories. How big is the market for milkshakes? It's a serious question. Well, you know, who knows? But the size of the milkshake just isn't the sum of the milkshakes of Burger King, Wendy's and McDonald's milkshakes. But it includes, from the customer's point of view, all of those other attributes of bananas, donuts, bagels, snickers. Bars and when they implemented this insight in the portions of America where they developed it turned out to be seven times bigger than they had thought when it was marketed only by the attributes and most markets are characterized that way. There there is a lot of non consumption and you can understand how to improve it only if you understand the job to be.