For Starters #0: What Problem is Someone Buying This to Solve?
Very early in my career, while at a design agency with a reputation for raising eyebrows, I was introduced to Chindōgu (珍道具) - cool product ideas that don't solve the intended problem - and risk making it much, much worse.
Decades later, my more recent work has been split between scouring the globe for Cool Product Ideas and transforming them into Something Useful. No, the majority of these ideas don't cross that chasm. Those that do, always look very different on the other side.
This chasm however, isn't a vast canyon. It's a single question:
"What problem is someone buying this to solve?"
For those familiar, yes, this question is the basis of the JobsToBeDone model of innovation. JobsToBeDone argues people 'hire' products, and services to perform a 'job' just as we hire people. What we hire products and services for is often not as clear and obvious as what we hire people for - JobsToBeDone aims to make those implicit job descriptions explicit.
As an approach, JobsToBeDone provides two significant advantages over other innovation models (especially the very popular "Let's Just Build It and Cross Our Fingers" model):
It opens up a wider option set for 'how' the job is successsfully fulfilled. This itself drives creativity, delight, and learning.
The criteria for success is fixed. This means we can evaluate different solutions - from that wider option set - against the desired outcome - again driving iteration and evolution.
Yes, it is possible to dive into the sunk cost of a Cool Product Idea and extract the pearl of a JobToBeDone. There's also a strong likelihood we'll return empty-handed.
For Starters, a shorter, more reliable, and more capital-efficient approach to harvest a JobToBeDone, is by clearly defining a persistent, frustrating problem.
The persistent nature of these problems provides lots of opportunities to test many, varied, and low cost interventions, and then evolve and automate those interventions. Plus, any immediate relief to the problem is an welcome improvement - in the words of one person i discussed this model with, "...anything to stop the bleeding."
Once defined, the well-articulated problem also becomes a convenient answer to the bromide, "Nice to meet you, what do you do?"
“I help [customer segment] frustrated by how difficult it is to [JobToBeDone].” [1]
e.g. "I help B2B founders frustrated by how difficult it is to land their first 10 sales.
The second great thing about a well articulated problem: the most important actions are clear and obvious. Using the example sentence above - if I'm not talking to early stage B2B founders about their sales processes, I'm not doing the most important thing.
With all this in mind, I'm starting next professional chapter by collecting problems [2].
I invite you to add your most persistent, frustrating problems - whether personal or professional - to my ongoing list:
https://garrickvanburen.com/persistently-frustrating-problems/
If you'd prefer to talk though the problems - or want to discuss considerations in turning them into Something Useful - grab some time off my calendly:
After years of working with the Business Model Canvas, the Lean Canvas, and even creating client-specific variations of these 1-pagers, I've found this 1-sentence is a faster, clearer, and more resilient tool than all of them.
Yes, I'm also starting this 'For Starters' email series.