Joe: Alright Lewis, here’s a wild statistic for you. A McKinsey poll found that 84% of global executives believe innovation is absolutely critical for their company's growth. Lewis: Okay, that makes sense. No surprises there. Every company wants to be the next big thing. Joe: Right. But here’s the kicker. The same poll found that 94% of those same executives are unsatisfied with their own innovation performance. Lewis: Wait, 94%? That’s not just a small gap, that's a catastrophic failure rate. They're spending hundreds of billions on R&D, and almost all of them feel like they're just throwing money into a bonfire. Joe: Exactly. It’s like Yogi Berra said, "We’re lost, but we’re making good time!" And that massive disconnect is precisely what today’s book is about. We're diving into Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice by the late, great Clayton Christensen and his co-authors. Lewis: Ah, Christensen. The Harvard professor who gave us the legendary concept of "disruptive innovation." That term is everywhere now. Joe: The very same. And with this book, he and his team wanted to solve that 94% problem. They argue that innovation isn't about luck, or genius, or being in the right place at the right time. It's a process. A process you can master if you start asking a fundamentally different question. Lewis: Okay, I'm intrigued. What's the magic question? What are all these companies getting wrong? Joe: Well, to understand it, we have to start not with a high-tech gadget or a brilliant piece of software, but with a simple, everyday fast-food milkshake.

Lewis: A milkshake? Seriously? That's the key to unlocking billions in innovation? Joe: It sounds mundane, but this story is the perfect illustration of the core idea. So, a fast-food chain wanted to sell more milkshakes. They did what every company does: they brought in focus groups. They asked customers, "How can we make this better for you? Thicker? More chocolatey? Cheaper? More chunks of stuff in it?" Lewis: The standard playbook. Tweak the product attributes. Joe: Exactly. They followed the feedback, made improvements, and... nothing happened. Sales were completely flat. The company was stumped. So they brought in Christensen’s team, including a consultant named Bob Moesta, who approached it from a totally different angle. He didn't ask what customers wanted in a milkshake. He asked, "I wonder what job arises in people's lives that causes them to come here and 'hire' a milkshake?" Lewis: Hold on. 'Hire' a milkshake? That sounds a bit academic, Joe. What does that actually mean? Joe: It's a crucial reframing. Instead of seeing people as a collection of demographic attributes—a 35-year-old male, income of X, lives in the suburbs—you see them as individuals trying to make progress in their lives. They 'hire' a product or service to help them do that. So, the team decided to just watch. They spent 18 hours in one of the restaurants, just observing. Lewis: Eighteen hours watching a milkshake machine? That's some serious dedication. What did they find? Joe: They found something fascinating. A huge number of milkshakes were sold before 8:30 in the morning. It was always a lone person in a car, and they almost never bought anything else. Just the milkshake. Lewis: That is weird. Who has a milkshake for breakfast? Joe: That's what they thought! So they went out and started interviewing these morning commuters. They asked, "What job were you trying to get done when you came here this morning?" And after a few awkward conversations, the real story emerged. The commuters had a long, boring drive to work. They weren't hungry yet, but they knew they would be by 10 a.m. They needed something to do with their free hand while driving, something that would make the commute more interesting. Lewis: Okay, I can see that. It's a little moment of something to look forward to on a tedious drive. Joe: Precisely. And when they thought about it that way, they realized what the milkshake was really competing against. What else could they 'hire' for that job? They'd tried a banana, but it was gone in two minutes. Not very engaging. They'd tried a doughnut, but it left their fingers sticky and crumbs all over their work clothes. Bagels were dry and required two hands to put cream cheese on. Lewis: So the competition for the morning milkshake wasn't another restaurant's milkshake. It was a banana, a doughnut, or just... boredom. That's a huge mental shift. Joe: A massive shift! The milkshake was perfect for the job. It was thick, so it took a long time to suck up the straw—at least 20 minutes of engagement. It only required one hand. It was filling. It solved the job of "make my boring commute more bearable" better than any of its competitors. Lewis: Wow. But that was only half the story, right? What about the rest of the day? Joe: Right. They noticed another spike in sales in the afternoon. But this time, it was almost always a parent with a child. And when they interviewed the parents, they discovered a completely different job. The parent had been running errands all day, and at some point, they had to say "no" to the child. "No, you can't have that toy. No, we can't go to the park." They felt guilty. Lewis: Oh, I know that feeling. The parent-guilt trip. Joe: Exactly. The job that arose in their life was, "I need to feel like a good parent. I need a quick, easy way to have a positive interaction and show my child I love them." Buying a small milkshake was the perfect solution. The kid feels treated, the parent feels like a hero, and it's over in five minutes. For that job, the milkshake was competing with buying a toy at the store or promising a trip to the playground later. Lewis: So the same product was being 'hired' for two totally different jobs. One is about staving off boredom for a solo commuter, and the other is about emotional connection for a parent and child. Joe: You got it. And once the company understood those two distinct jobs, the path to innovation became crystal clear. For the morning commuter, they could make the shake even thicker to last longer, maybe add tiny bits of fruit to make it more interesting, and create a self-service kiosk so commuters could swipe a card and be out in 30 seconds without waiting in line. Lewis: And for the afternoon parent-child job? Joe: They could offer half-sized milkshakes. Kids never finish a full one anyway, and it would feel like a more responsible, less sugary treat for the parent to give. Suddenly, they weren't just guessing at features anymore. They were designing solutions for a specific job.

Lewis: Okay, the milkshake story is brilliant for a simple product. It makes so much sense. But what about something complex, something life-changing like buying a house? Surely it's not that simple. People don't just 'hire' a house to solve a five-minute problem. Joe: That's the perfect question, because the theory gets even more powerful with high-stakes decisions. It's not about the product at all, it's about the progress people are trying to make. Which brings us to another fantastic story from the book, this time about selling condominiums in a struggling Detroit market. Lewis: Detroit real estate. That sounds like a tough gig. Joe: It was. A developer had built these beautiful, affordable condos aimed at "downsizers"—retirees, divorced parents, people whose kids had left for college. The units were priced well, had high-end finishes, and lots of customization options. They had plenty of people touring the model homes, but very few were actually buying. The sales team was baffled. Lewis: They had a great product, a clear target demographic, and interested customers. What was going wrong? Joe: They were stuck in the same trap as the milkshake company. They were focused on the product and the customer profile. They thought, "Maybe we need a bay window? Or granite countertops?" They were trying to improve the 'what' without understanding the 'why'. So, the consultant, Bob Moesta again, started interviewing the people who did buy, but also the ones who looked and then walked away. He didn't ask what they liked about the condo. He asked them to tell him the story of how they got to this point. Lewis: He was 'job hunting.' Joe: Exactly. And he uncovered a massive, invisible force that was holding people back. Over and over again, he heard about the dining room table. Lewis: The dining room table? What does a table have to do with buying a condo? Joe: Everything, it turned out. For these downsizers, that table wasn't just a piece of furniture. It was where they'd hosted every Thanksgiving for 20 years. It was where their kids did their homework. It was where they had family meetings and birthday parties. Getting rid of that table felt like getting rid of their family history. It was the physical embodiment of the life they were leaving behind, and the anxiety of that decision was paralyzing. Lewis: Wow. So they had the perfect product, great features, a good price... and it was a piece of furniture that was stopping the sale? That's unbelievable. Joe: It is. And it reveals the true forces at play in any decision. Christensen describes two sets of forces. On one side, you have the 'push' of the current situation—"my old house is too big to clean"—and the 'pull' of the new solution—"this condo is beautiful and maintenance-free." But on the other side, you have the 'anxiety' of the new solution—"what will my new life be like?"—and the 'habit' of the present—"I'm comfortable here." For the condos, the push and pull weren't strong enough to overcome the anxiety and habit. Lewis: This is what you mean by the emotional and social dimensions of the job, right? The 'job' wasn't 'buy a condo,' it was 'start a new, simpler life,' and that's a terrifying job to take on. Joe: You've nailed it. Moesta realized they weren't in the business of new home construction. They were in the business of moving lives. The competition wasn't another condo developer. The competition was the anxiety of change. It was the customer's decision to just do nothing and stay put. Lewis: So what did they do? They couldn't just tell people to get over their emotional attachment to a table. Joe: They stopped selling condos and started solving the real job. They redesigned the floor plans to make the second bedroom a bit smaller to create a dining area that could fit that old, oversized table. They partnered with a moving company and offered two years of storage for free, so people didn't have to decide what to throw away right away. They simplified the customization options to reduce decision fatigue. Lewis: They weren't just selling a product anymore. They were selling a service that managed the transition. They were reducing the anxiety. Joe: Precisely. And sales took off. In a market that was down almost 50%, their business grew by 25%. All because they stopped asking "How can we make our product better?" and started asking "What is the customer's struggle, and how can we help them make progress?"

Lewis: That's incredible. So whether it's a ten-dollar milkshake or a two-hundred-thousand-dollar home, the lesson is the same. We're so focused on the features of our 'product' that we completely miss the real struggle happening in the customer's life. The real opportunities for innovation are in solving those struggles. Joe: Exactly. And Christensen's core point, which is so powerful, is that all the data companies obsess over—customer demographics, product attributes, market size—that's all just correlation. It tells you what is happening, but it can never tell you why. Lewis: Like the fact that a 6'8" Harvard professor and a teenage girl might both buy the New York Times on the same day. Their demographics are wildly different, but the 'job' they hire it for—maybe to kill 20 minutes before an appointment—could be identical. Joe: That's a perfect example from the book. The story of the struggle, the context, the 'why'—that is the only thing that reveals causality. And that's why 94% of innovators are failing. They're looking at spreadsheets full of correlations instead of looking at people's lives. They're trying to build for an 'average' customer who, as the Air Force discovered with their pilot cockpits in the 1950s, doesn't actually exist. Lewis: It's a fundamental shift in perspective. You stop seeing customers and you start seeing jobs. You stop seeing competitors and you start seeing all the different ways people try to make progress. Joe: It really makes you look at every single purchase differently. It's a framework that, once you see it, you can't unsee. It applies to everything from the software you use to the vacation you book. Lewis: Totally. It leaves me with one big question for everyone listening: The last time you bought something, anything at all, what 'job' were you really hiring it to do? Joe: Think on that. This is Aibrary, Lewis: signing off.