Our Guest: Tony Ulwick is the pioneer of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory and the inventor of Outcome-Driven Innovation® (ODI), a powerful strategy and innovation process with a documented success rate that is 5-times the industry average. Tony has been granted 12 patents for his game-changing innovation practices, which result in products that help customers get a “job” done better.
Key Takeaways:
- Innovation Missteps: Even giants like IBM can have product failures. Tony’s experience with the PCjr's failure led to the birth of Outcome-Driven Innovation.
- Granularity Matters: To truly innovate, one must break down processes into specific, granular outcomes and tasks.
- Job Map vs. Process Map: It's crucial to understand the difference. A job map focuses on what customers are trying to achieve, not on current processes.
- Defining Markets Correctly: Grounding strategy around a stable focal point for value creation, like the jobs customers are trying to do, is critical to sustained success.
- Outcome-Driven Innovation: The ODI process is about understanding and focusing on the customer's desired outcomes.
Quotes:
- "Companies with that kind of resource could put out products that would fail. But as it turns out, Companies do it all the time.” - Tony
- "Instead of trying to create a better drill... let's lay out what customers are trying to do as a process." - Tony
- "What we're trying to do is to figure out what they're trying to achieve, not what they're doing today.” - Tony
