Mapping Experiences, 3rd Edition

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 14. Mapping and Jobs to Be Done

Creating the right experiences and then integrating around them to solve a job is critical for competitive advantage.

—Clayton Christensen et al., Competing Against Luck

IN THIS CHAPTER

• JTBD fundamentals
• Ecosystem mapping for scoping
• Job mapping techniques
• Upgrading to experience maps
• Collaborative methods for job mapping

Scott Cook, founder of the renowned tax software company Intuit, once made a surprising claim about his company’s biggest competitor. It wasn’t a rival to the TurboTax software package, or the accountants offering clients tax preparation services.

It was the pencil.

“The pencil is a tough and resilient substitute,” Cook noted. “Yet the entire industry had overlooked it.”^*

Think about it: when you’re preparing a tax return, making a calculation on a pad of paper is natural and hard to improve on. Cook realized his software didn’t just need to outperform other tax packages. It needed to be more effective than and as simple to use as a pencil.

This insight reframes everything. You don’t compete against products in your category as defined by industry analysts. You compete against anything that gets the job done from the user’s point of view.

Jobs to be done (JTBD) provides a powerful lens for customer-centered mapping by shifting focus from solutions to the objectives customers aim to accomplish. When you map jobs from their perspective rather than journeys with your product, you can see opportunities ...