Anthony W Ulwick (Strategyn) about Jobs-to-be-Done and Edizon

Tony Ulwick is the pioneer of jobs-to-be-done theory, the inventor of the Outcome-Driven Innovation® (ODI) process, and the founder of the strategy and innovation consulting firm Strategyn.

Early in his career as a product engineer, he experienced a big disappointment: for 18 months he put his heart and soul into creating a product that failed in the market. This set him on a Mission to identify the metrics that customers use to judge the value of new products. He studied and tried out many new tools that looked promising, including voice of the customer, quality function deployment (QFD), TRIZ, Six Sigma, and conjoint analysis. His breakthrough was that he could apply Six Sigma principles to innovation if he studied the process that people were trying to execute when they were using a product or service, rather than studying the product itself.

In 2000 he introduced ODI and his research and segmentation techniques to Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, who called the process the customer was trying to execute, the “job” the customer was trying to get done.

He is the author of What Customers Want (McGraw-Hill) and numerous articles in Harvard Business Review and Sloan Management Review. His latest book is Jobs-to-be-Done Theory to Practice.