Jobs to Be Done

The jobs-to-be-done framework asks a different question from conventional market analysis. Conventional analysis asks who the customer is and what the customer wants. The jobs framework asks what job the customer is hiring the product to do. The distinction is not semantic: it is the difference between describing purchasing behavior and explaining it. A job is a progress the customer is trying to make in a particular circumstance. The product is the candidate hired to make that progress. Competitors for any given job are not necessarily products in the same category — they are any candidate, in any category, that could do the job. Applied to AI, the framework reveals that the language interface is being hired for a specific job: closing the gap between what a person can imagine and what she can build.