The Innovator's Toolkit: 50+ Techniques for Predictable and Sustainable Organic Growth, 2nd Edition

Technique 3

Outcome Expectations

Give customers more of what they desire.

 

Outcome expectations are a direct outgrowth of innovation jobs to be done (JTBDs), and they lead to eventual new solutions that create more value and customer satisfaction than existing products and services. For example, the job of cleaning your clothes has many associated outcome expectations, such as minimize the time it takes to clean clothes, increase the likelihood of stain removal, and increase the ease with which clothes are cleaned.

It's important to define any outcome expectations associated with a JTBD when pursuing an innovation based on that JTBD. Understanding these expectations, and knowing how satisfied (or unsatisfied) customers are with current solutions, helps you identify unidentified market space and possibly fill that space with better solutions than what exists today. You may need light survey design and sampling help from a statistician to apply this technique, but for the most part it requires no expert assistance.

Background

There are four types of outcome expectations:

1. Desired outcomes customers want to achieve.

2. Undesired outcomes customers want to avoid.

3. Desired outcomes providers want to achieve.

4. Undesired outcomes providers want to avoid (see Exhibit 3.1).

Exhibit 3.1 Outcome Expectations.

By segmenting outcome expectations in this manner, you can look at the JTBD ...