Building consumer needs into a company’s innovation process

The question

The company had years of consumer research, market data and strategy work. What it wanted was one shared account of the consumer jobs behind it all.

That account had to work for product development, R&D, marketing and sales alike. And it had to outlast any workshop: the company’s own people needed to write and apply job statements, with a place for them in its innovation process.

Our approach

We started from what the organization already knew, drawing years of its research into draft job statements.

Each statement covered the functional task a consumer wants done, the emotional state they are trying to reach and the way they want to be seen, so every function could recognize the job.

Then we tested the statements against the business. An intensive working session with the core team weighed each one against brand position and what the operation could credibly deliver, and the weak ones were cut.

From there the work moved onto people’s desks. In a digital sprint, people from five functions connected each statement to live decisions of their own, and a pilot on an early proposition became the worked example for the training.

What the team came away with

The company had a jobs-to-be-done framework of its own: the job statements, experience tools linked to its innovation process, and a worked example from its own pilot.

It also had three tiers of training with notes for trainers, built so its own champions could teach the approach.

We worked alongside its teams in live development programs too, bringing consumers in through clinics and adding experience maps and a concept-development toolkit for the products in hand.