Letter to John and Rick about JTBD

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My thoughts about JTBD are changing after talks with you. The conversation w/ Rick was helpful too.

I'm seeing the shortcomings of JTBD as a theory of "customer motivation". 

Let's back up.

  Question: Why do so many innovations fail - either in design or in their ability to persuade customers to buy them?
  Answer: One reason is the "customer needs" paradigm.

"Customer needs" paradigm

  Customers have "unmet needs" (or just "needs")
  Innovator studies needs
  Innovators make solutions to meet those "unmet needs".
  Customers buy solution and resolve their "unmet need"
  Problems with "customer needs" paradigm
  Where do those "needs" come from?
  Why do "needs" suddenly change (Preference Reversals & Intransitivity of Preferences)? Yesterday your Blackberry was great;     today it's garbage and the iPhone is a "must have".
  Why do markets grow, renew, or change (Creative Destruction, Kondratiev waves)? 

Conclusions

  The customer needs paradigm is self-referential (or circular, or is a dead-end?). It suggests an ideal that if you study        needs the right way, you can solve them once and for all. Correctly solve those, and then the customer no longer has unmet    needs.

  What's happening is that those who fall victim to the "customer needs" paradigm, are being fooled by hindsight bias. They      think that when a customer suddenly wants something new, it is because the new thing is tapping into existing "unmet          needs" that the "old" thing didn't.

  The "customer needs" paradigm assumes the needs existed a priori. 

  That the unmet needs exist, but are just hidden. 

  This way of thinking, of course, has a flaw: How could the customer have had unmet needs, if they were happy with the old?      This logic only works if you suggest that customers have "unmet needs" but just don't know it.

JTBD Market Renewal thesis

  It starts with the innovator!

  It is the innovator who defines and creates "what customers want". Hence Steve Jobs: "Customers don't know what they want       until you show them"

  The innovator first understands our intrinsic desire to grow, change, evolve, understand the new and unknown. Why we have       these intrinsic desires is beyond JTBD and more of a study of the human condition.

  Then, the innovator uses their understanding of technology to create and then offer customers a new way to grow/evole           themselves. If this new way to grow/evolve does so in a way that customers: 
    
    A. Believe they can use it to grow (do I have the skills to use it, can it fit into my world)
    B. Sees the switch to the new way as "worth" it? (is my $$ better spent elsewhere, tradeoffs, JTBD choice model)
   
  Then the "need" is created. In that moment, the customer rejects the "old way" and accepts or desires the "new way".

  When the consumer accepts and uses the new innovation to evolve, the market evoles and renews.

  And then the cycle starts again! The innovator first understands our intrinsic desire to grow, change, evolve, understand       the new and unknown....

What about a customer's JTBD?
  
  A customer's JTBD is their desire to evolve in a particular way. "Help me strength/improve my social connections". "Help me     become better at tennis or a better tennis player", "Help our organization become better at using sales to generates           profits."

  This might resolve Rick's notion about Jobs as roles. A JTBD might be a desire to grow-in-roles: make me a better friend,       father, tennis player. Or it may not. Maybe it's growth-in-skills: help me become better at using sales to generate           profits.

  I see it as largely a matter of abstractions. Growth-in-roles vs growth-in-skills isn't an important debate. All that really     matter is if the abstraction helps the innovator understand a customer's "vector of growth".

So then what are "unmet needs"

  Unmet needs are the effects caused by the interactions between [customer's JTBD + solution hired for JTBD + circumstances of    individual]

  This is why two customers who have the same JTBD may use different solutions for it. 

  This is why two customers who use the same product for the same JTBD use the same product differently. Or want different        features from the same product.

  This is why customers change "want they want", and why "unmet needs" change. If there is a change in either:

    A. circumstances of individual
    B. solution hired for JTBD
    C. customer's JTBD

  When the interactions change, "want customers want" or their  "unmet needs"  change along with it. Why? Becuase "needs"         don't belong to the customer, but to the system customers interact with.
  
Your thoughts?

Alan