Jobs to Be Done (JTBD)

Overview

People don't buy products — they hire products to do a job (make progress in a specific circumstance, across functional, emotional, and social dimensions). Customers switch when a new hire does the job better; they churn when your product stops serving the job. Developed by Christensen, Moesta, and Taddy Hall; codified in Competing Against Luck (2016). Rooted in Levitt's 1960 insight: "People don't want a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole."

Composes with pmf-crossing-the-chasm, mvp, switching-costs, first-principles.

When to Use

• Product is technically excellent but customers don't switch from incumbents
• Demographic segmentation produces segments that don't behave alike
• Churn is high but exit surveys don't predict it; roadmap debate is feature-vs-feature
• New market entry: "who is our customer" instead of "what job"
• Building an AI-native product or "AI wrapper": are users hiring us for output/features, or for progress (get unblocked, ship faster) — and are we losing to AI adoption, the base model's own app, or non-consumption?

Not when: commodity; regulatory-compliance purchase; org buyer with different motivations than end-user.

Coaching Novices (Adaptive Front Door)