Designing products and services customers want to buy. What a concept! Given the batting average for product development is approximately 20%, we should reexamine the traditional “voice of the customer” approach. If this traditional approach worked, then why do we have such a low batting average? If we had an accurate method of defining product requirements, then why do we call the product definition phase, the “fuzzy front end?”
We believe the primary reason is that many companies are looking for innovation in all the wrong places. If that is so, what does it take to look for innovation in the right places and in the right way? Is there an approach that can take out the fuzziness from the “fuzzy front end?”
The approach we believe has a much higher likelihood for success is to define the market from the perspective of customers who have a common Job-To-Be-Done and are looking for solutions to get their job done. This is a concern oriented approach rather than a solution oriented approach. Defining the market this way, allows you to study the entire process the customer employs to get their job done. This allows you to surface potential innovation opportunities throughout the entire process. It also focuses on what customers know and can talk about accurately. Customers know what job they want to get done, the level of importance, and their level of satisfaction with the current approaches. When approached this way, developers/engineers can do what they do best. Provide innovative solutions.
This approach requires you to shift your mindset. You will have to learn how to analyze a market and customer requirements from a new, more powerful Job-To-Be-Done perspective. You will have to learn how to ask questions in a rigorous manner.
Taking this approach can disclose real opportunities to innovate and create value by looking for the biggest challenges at each step of the customer’s process, from the customer’s Job-To-Be-Done perspective and in the customer’s language.
