Understand your customers' needs
So you think you've identified a problem, or an opportunity for something to be done better...that's great, you've identified a fantastic opportunity for innovation! Opportunities for innovation are always linked to unmet, or poorly met customer needs. It might be that you have real clarity around the unmet need/opportunity, or you might just have an inkling. Either way, it's worth making sure that you've honed in on the right thing by sense-checking with your customers!
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WHAT IT INVOLVES: Uncovering the customer needs that are most important by using 'Jobs To Be Done' (JTBD) theory.
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WHY: Uncovering our customers' needs or JTBD that don't currently have adequate solutions are a great way to ensure we are only developing solutions that truly solve a problem for our customers or provide a better customer experience.
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HOW: JTBD theory states that whenever we're trying to create something new or change something for the better, we first need to understand the range of 'jobs' that exist for the various people who will be affected by your new idea or change.
Example
Feeling stuck? Think of the quote "people don't buy a quarter inch drill, they buy a quarter inch hole".
When someone is buying a drill, the job they're most often trying to get done is to make a hole... and they'll use whatever makes that hole best (at the moment drills are the best solution for hole making...but in the future something might come along that makes holes even better than a drill does and then people will use that thing instead!).
This opens the door to a fresh perspective on the problem - because for the problem-solving team, the question moves on from "how can we improve the drill?" to "what's the best thing we can create to help people make holes?"
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If you dig deeper, you might find that for some people, their job is actually to hang something easily to a wall (thus the invention of command hooks!).
Innovation Tip
People will often have a whole range of jobs to be done. They usually fall into one of three categories. If we take an example of the JTBD people might have when making a donation for example - you might find:​
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Functional JTBD: Register my tax deduction as easily as possible​
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Emotional JTBD: ​Feel connected to the outcome of my donation​
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Social JTBD: Be able to easily showcase my connection to the cause to my friends and family