An Innovation Practitioner’s starter guide to learning Jobs-To-Be-Done

2 min readAug 31, 2020

There are many of you out there who call yourself a strategist, designer, entrepreneur, product manager, business developer, business analyst, user researcher, market researcher, facilitator, or a venture capitalist. I use the word “innovation practitioner” to generally identify us all. Because innovation is important to us and it is what we are trying to do. It is our jobs to be done, so we may get paid handsomely. Below are what I think could help me become stronger in this subject matter. And I hope it will help you too. I am not an expert yet and I may be brainwashed by all these readings. However, I am a thinker and habitual reader. At a glance, I think the JTBD concept and process is worthy of a serious look.

The step-by-step guide

Read. Get yourself familiar with the concepts. JTBD is a conglomerate of many subjects, tools and methods, i.e. design thinking, service design, psychology behavior model, decision model, sociology, agile, and more. It is NOT fixated on one way or one methodology of practicing. The greatness will come when you are able to leverage different tools and methods. Knowing more will help you moving forward in the process of achieving innovation.

2. Talk to people about it, i.e. join book clubs.

3. Practice with a team.

4. Practice for real tasks and projects. i.e. the interviewing, observe customers, write the job statements, perform analysis and etc.

5. Practice with real customers with real business problems.

6. Most importantly, if you are interested in transforming your own organization, be sure to get everyone (especially your boss and boss’s boss) become familiar with the JTBD concept before start pitching for changes.

7. Don’t be afraid to fail. Keep practicing!

More Readings

In addition to the books I mentioned before, below are articles and blogs you may want to follow up. Thanks to fellow bookworms for sharing the links. It has helped me kickstarted my jtbd journey. If you find articles worth sharing, please feel free to post in the comments.

If you are a novice to this subject, before proceeding, be sure to finish Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice, by Clayton M. Christensen and Jobs to Be Done: Theory to Practice by Anthony Ulwick

https://jobs-to-be-done.com/jobs-to-be-done-interviews-79623d99b3e5

Personas vs. Jobs to be done

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/personas-jobs-be-done/

Design Thinking

https://medium.com/swlh/project-management-3-0-why-design-thinking-is-the-next-gen-5be78e509103

https://24ways.org/2017/jobs-to-be-done-in-your-ux-toolbox/

https://experiencinginformation.com/2016/10/23/a-practical-model-for-jobs-to-be-done-jtbd/

https://experiencinginformation.com/2016/12/11/combining-mental-model-diagrams-and-jobs-to-be-done/

https://jtbd.info/5-tips-for-writing-a-job-story-7c9092911fc9

https://issuu.com/bminctaiwan/docs/little_yellow_book_v.171019_a52f37b16185ce

https://medium.com/gurugurugo/%E5%BC%95%E7%99%BC%E9%A9%9A%E4%BA%BA%E7%9A%84%E7%88%86%E7%82%B8%E5%8A%9B-%E9%8B%BC%E9%90%B5%E4%BA%BA-elon-musk-%E7%9F%A5%E8%AD%98%E8%BB%8D%E7%81%AB%E5%BA%AB%E4%B8%AD%E6%9C%80%E5%BC%B7%E6%AE%BA%E5%82%B7%E5%8A%9B%E7%9A%84%E6%AD%A6%E5%99%A8-%E7%AC%AC%E4%B8%80%E6%80%A7%E5%8E%9F%E7%90%86-first-principle-80de738799ce

https://www.contenthacker.today/2018/01/content-hacker-englishisland.html?utm_source=fb-vista&utm_medium=direct_link&utm_campaign=link&utm_content=link