Consumers buy products and services to reach a certain outcome or get a specific job done. You buy a car to drive to work and maybe improve your status (if you chose BMW, Audi or a similar premium brand) and you buy a BlackBerry to be able to do your email during a business trip.

Understanding these goals is essential when developing new breakthrough ideas because only then designers and developers are able to create products and services that makes it easier and faster for customers to reach a certain outcome. The best example for this is the integration of the Apple iPod with iTunes. The customer’s goal is to listen to music and this requires also to download music from the Internet and seamlessly upload it to your MP3 player.

In the May 2008 Issue of the Harvard Business Review, the Lance Bettencourt and Anthony Ulwick, consultants at Strategyn have published an article titled “The Customer-Centered Innovation Map” that introduces a tool kit to analyze customer’s job to discover opportunities for breakthrough products and services.

The article can be found online at the HBR store.

Why do I blog this? My research is directed in a similar direction. The goal is to develop a formal method to understand consumer goals and model their behavior using different resources (i.e. products, services, skills) to reach a certain outcome. If you are working in this field as well or if you are interested to find out more, send me an email, I would be interested in exchanging ideas.

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