Business: Innovation

This is an excerpt from Chapter 4 of Jim Kalbach’s new book The Jobs to Be Done Playbook: Align Your Markets, Organization, and Strategy Around Customer Needs. ©2020, Rosenfeld Media.

Chapter 4: Defining Value

In this chapter, you will learn about these plays:

• How to find unmet needs
• How to create goal-based personas
• A new way to compare competing solutions
• How to define a value proposition

The product marketing manager at a company I once worked for stood up in a meeting to present his strategy. He proceeded to describe the top customer needs that we should support with our solutions. I was thrilled to see him align to a customer-centric model. Read More

In differentiating an organization’s products from those of its competitors, design innovation is just as important as technology innovation. Both are vital to the continued success of an organization’s products in the marketplace. Successful innovation requires more than just generating a lot of creative ideas. It’s about execution—actually bringing products to market that embody innovative design solutions and deliver business impact.

What is the role of constraints in design innovation? In this article, I’ll discuss three types of constraints: technical constraints, business constraints, and design constraints. According to Charles Eames:

“Design depends largely on constraints. … Here is one of the few effective keys to the design problem—the ability of the designer to recognize as many of the constraints as possible—his willingness and enthusiasm for working within these constraints….” Read More

According to IBM’s research, design thinking can cut development expenses by around 75% on some projects. Design thinking is all about solving problems by keeping users at the center of the design process and can reshape the entire product experience, whether a mobile app, Web platform, or software as a service (SaaS) tool.

With thousands of apps, Web sites, and services competing for users’ attention, we must exceed their expectations. User behaviors are shifting faster than ever, so keeping up with the marketplace can feel like a never-ending sprint. Imbibing a user-centered mindset through UX innovation can bring clarity and focus in the midst of that rush. Focus on what real people expect and value to avoid wasting time coding features that would fall flat. Start putting users first.

Design thinking sparks fresh concepts in UX design and each step of the process—research, prototyping, and feedback—can result in greater user engagement and a much better user experience, truly connecting users to your product. Let’s explore how a user-centric approach can encourage new ways of thinking about product design. Read More