Joe: Here’s a wild statistic for you, Lewis. More than half of all new products launched fail to meet their own company's expectations. Lewis: That sounds bad, but honestly, not that wild. I feel like we hear about flops all the time. Joe: Okay, but let's drill down. Get this. The data suggests only one in one hundred new products even covers its own development costs. And even crazier, only one in three hundred new products has a significant impact on customer behavior or a company's growth trajectory. One in three hundred. Lewis: Whoa. Okay, that is an absolutely abysmal success rate. It feels like these massive, brilliant companies are just standing in a dark room, throwing billions of dollars worth of darts and almost never hitting the board. Joe: Exactly. And that is the core problem that a fascinating book we're diving into today tries to solve. It’s called Jobs to Be Done: A Roadmap for Customer-Centered Innovation, by Stephen Wunker, Jessica Wattman, and David Farber. Lewis: Right, this is a name that pops up a lot in business circles. It’s designed as a practical guide that builds on the famous theory from Harvard's Clayton Christensen. I know it's well-regarded, even won a business book award, but I've also seen that the reader reception can be a bit mixed. Some people find it to be a game-changing framework, while others feel it's a little simplistic. Joe: That's a perfect tension to explore today. Because the core idea is, on the surface, deceptively simple. But its application is what becomes so profound. It all starts by realizing we've been asking the wrong question all along.

Joe: You know that quote often attributed to Henry Ford? "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." Lewis: Yeah, it's a classic. The point being that customers are good at describing a problem in terms of the current solution, but they're terrible at imagining a truly new one. Joe: Precisely. And the "Jobs to be Done" theory argues that for decades, innovation has been stuck in that "faster horses" loop. Companies ask customers what features they want, they look at demographic data, and they build incrementally better versions of what already exists. This book says that's the path to becoming one of the 299 failures. The breakthrough comes when you stop focusing on the product or the customer, and start focusing on the "job" the customer is trying to get done. Lewis: Okay, "hiring a product to do a job." I've heard the phrase, but what does that actually look like in practice? Can you give me a concrete example? Joe: The perfect one is Uber. Think back to the pre-Uber world. If you asked someone what they wanted from a taxi service, they might have said, "I want cleaner cars," or "I wish they took credit cards," or "I want friendlier drivers." Faster horses. Lewis: Right. Minor improvements on the existing system. Joe: But Uber’s founders didn't focus on the product—the taxi ride. They focused on the job. And the job wasn't just "get me from point A to point B." That was the functional part. The much deeper, more emotional jobs were things like "remove the uncertainty from my travel," "give me a sense of control and safety," and "eliminate the friction of payment." Lewis: That makes so much sense. The worst part of trying to get a cab wasn't the ride itself. It was the anxiety. Standing on a corner in the rain, not knowing if a cab will ever show up. Watching the meter run up and wondering if the driver is taking you the long way. Fumbling for cash at the end. Joe: Every single one of those was a pain point in the job of "getting a ride." Uber addressed the job, not the car. The app lets you see the car coming, so uncertainty is gone. It gives you a fare estimate upfront, so the financial anxiety is gone. It handles payment automatically, so the friction is gone. They built a solution for the job, and in doing so, they didn't just create a better taxi company; they completely disrupted the global transportation industry. Lewis: I can see how that reframing is so powerful. It reminds me of another example from the book. They talk about a movie theater owner. The owner thinks their competition is the other cinema across town. So they offer cheaper popcorn and comfier seats. Joe: Faster horses. Lewis: Exactly. But when they start thinking in terms of "jobs," they realize the real job is "keep my kids entertained and happy on a rainy Saturday afternoon." And suddenly, their competition isn't just the other theater. It's the bowling alley, the indoor playground, the arcade, or even just staying home with a video game. Joe: And that realization opens up entirely new avenues for innovation. Maybe the theater should add a small playground. Maybe they should offer birthday party packages. The solution space becomes infinitely bigger once you correctly define the job. It’s about understanding the "why" behind the "what."

Lewis: Okay, the idea makes a ton of sense. It feels intuitive once you hear it. But that brings me back to our opening statistic. If this concept is so clear, why are the failure rates we started with so terrible? Why do brilliant companies with huge budgets keep getting it so wrong? Joe: Because having the insight is one thing; operationalizing it is another. The book outlines five key reasons companies consistently go astray, even with good intentions. First, they don't invest enough time. An executive has a "brilliant" idea in the shower and wants a product spec in two weeks. Lewis: I can feel the project managers listening to this nodding their heads in painful recognition. Joe: Second, they avoid the difficult questions. It's easier to ask "what color should it be?" than "is this a problem people actually care about solving?" Third, the research they do is often superficial. They run a focus group where people say they want a healthier snack, but they don't dig into the context of why and when. Lewis: The "faster horses" problem again. People will say what they think you want to hear, or what they think they should want. Joe: Exactly. The fourth and fifth reasons are a lack of data on the actual Jobs to be Done, and a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept itself. And this is where the "Roadmap" part of the book's title comes in. The authors argue that you can't just have a philosophy; you need a structured, repeatable process. Lewis: And this is where some of those reader critiques I mentioned come into play. Some have said that presenting this as a simple 'roadmap' might be a bit too neat for the messy reality of innovation. Is a checklist really the silver bullet for something so complex? Joe: That is a completely fair and important question. And the book's answer would be that it's not a simple checklist, but a disciplined framework for inquiry. It forces you to move through stages: defining the job, identifying drivers and obstacles, understanding the competition for that job, and only then generating and testing solutions. It's a system to prevent you from skipping straight to the fun part—building the thing—before you've done the hard work of understanding the problem. Lewis: So it's less of a paint-by-numbers and more of a structured scientific method for business innovation. It imposes discipline on a process that is often chaotic and ego-driven. Joe: That's the idea. It's about making customer-centricity a rigorous practice, not just a nice-sounding slogan on a corporate poster. But to your point about whether it's too simplistic, I think the best way to see its power is to see what happens when you apply it to a problem far more complex than which smartphone to build.

Joe: Let me show you how this 'simple' idea plays out when the stakes are infinitely higher. Let's talk about saving lives. In the mid-1990s, the standard treatment for severe childhood malnutrition in crisis zones was a therapeutic milk called F-100. Lewis: Okay, I'm with you. Joe: On paper, F-100 was a great product. It had all the right nutrients. But it was failing at its job. To prepare it, you needed clean water, which is often unavailable in a famine or refugee camp. It had to be refrigerated after mixing, which was impossible. It had to be administered by trained medical staff in a clinical setting. Lewis: So the most vulnerable kids—the ones who couldn't get to a clinic—were the ones who couldn't get the treatment. The product was perfect, but the delivery was failing the job. Joe: Exactly. A French pediatric nutritionist named André Briend saw this firsthand. He reframed the problem. He didn't ask, "How can we make a better nutritional formula?" He asked, "What is the job a mother in a remote village needs done?" The job was: "Help me save my severely malnourished child at home, with no clean water, no electricity, and no medical training." Lewis: That is a radically different problem statement. Joe: It changes everything. Briend knew the solution had to be ready-to-eat, shelf-stable, and easy for a mother to administer herself. The book says he was inspired by watching his own kids eat Nutella. He realized a peanut-based paste could be the perfect vehicle. Peanuts are nutrient-dense, familiar in many parts of Africa, and the oil prevents bacteria from growing. Lewis: Wow. Joe: The result was Plumpy'Nut. It's a small packet of peanut-based paste fortified with milk powder, vitamins, and minerals. It has a two-year shelf life, requires no water or preparation, and a mother can just open the packet and feed it to her child. It completely solved the real-world job. Since its creation, it's been used to treat millions of children with a success rate over 90%. Lewis: Okay. That... that lands differently. Hearing that story, the framework doesn't feel simplistic at all. It feels fundamental. It's about stripping away all the assumptions and using relentless empathy to find the real, underlying human need. Joe: And that's where the book quotes a USAID advisor in Afghanistan who trained soldiers in this thinking. His advice was simple: "Act like a three-year-old and ask ‘why, why, why?’" Keep asking why until you get to the root of the problem. That's the heart of the Jobs to be Done framework.

Joe: So when you pull it all together, you see this incredible arc. It starts as a business strategy to avoid the dismal failure rates we talked about, a way to build products people actually want, like Uber. Lewis: Then it becomes a structured process, a roadmap, that gives companies a disciplined way to move beyond their own biases and actually listen to the problems their customers are facing. Joe: And finally, as the Plumpy'Nut story shows, it transcends business entirely. It becomes a powerful framework for human-centered design that can be used to solve some of the world's most wicked problems. It’s a way of thinking that forces you to focus on the progress people are trying to make in their lives. Lewis: It's really a profound shift in perspective. It moves you away from the ego of the creator—"look at this cool thing I built"—and towards the empathy of the problem-solver—"what struggle can I help you overcome?" So the ultimate question this book leaves us with isn't 'what can we build?' but 'what is the real, deep, human job we are trying to help someone do?' Joe: That's the perfect way to put it. And it's a question that applies everywhere, whether you're designing an app, running a team, or just trying to be a better partner or friend. What is the job they need done right now? Lewis: A powerful question to carry with you. We'd love to hear from our listeners on this. Think about your own work or a product you love. What's the real "job" it's doing for you? Let us know. Joe: This is Aibrary, signing off.