A fascinating "Jobs-To-Be-Done" study
A MediaPost piece by Jason Weidner gives a fascinating glimpse of how mobile phone search is weaving itself into the life of at least one early adopter. The "Jobs-To-Be-Done" approach is exactly what Newspaper Next prescribes -- and newspaper companies need to be exploring this new frontier as quickly as they can.
The Newspaper Next project stresses a simple but highly effective approach for discovering great new products and solutions. Coming straight out of Dr. Clayton Christensen's work, this approach is called "Jobs To Be Done."
It involves figuring out what jobs people are trying to get done in their lives -- information jobs specifically, for those of us in the news/information business. This requires a kind of research seldom done by newspapers, or by other industries, for that matter. While most customer research focuses on product categories and target demographics, JTBD work focuses on what people need to get done in specific circumstances and how they make the resulting choices.
Dr. Christensen put it this way at an N2 symposium in February: "If you go out there, and look at the world from [the customers'] perspective, they don't think in terms of demographics or product categories, but rather, jobs just arise in their lives, and they hire products or services to get the job done."
To figure out what jobs people are trying to get done, you have to ask the right questions -- or even better, observe their behavior in the circumstance where the need arises. Once you understand the job they're really trying to do, and the circumstances in which they're doing it, you're in a much better position to figure out a great solution. And that may lead you to a great new product.
As I was trying to escape from my office today, I opened one last email, and I found myself reading an utterly fascinating piece on what amounted to a one-man, one-week JTBD study of a 20-Something's cellphone search use. In his SearchInsider column titled "Real-Life Search Study: 'A Week In The Life'", MediaPost writer Jason Weidner describes how a colleague used his cellphone to get information during a random week.
This is great, and I want more! The mobile phone is clearly the next frontier for media consumption, opening innumerable situations in daily life where media could never before accessed or consumed. Seeing what one young guy chooses to consume on that frontier is fascinating, and surely just a hint of what's yet to come.
In the Newspaper Next project, we see mobile as a must-do for newspaper companies -- and this small study is a great indication of how much we need to learn about this new frontier.
Comments
This is so true. Jobs to be done (JTBD) is one of the "greatest missing link" in the newspaper business model! Honestly though, I think a lot of it, without trying to sound guilty of agism is generational. I look at newspapers staffs that I have worked with, and it is predominatantly baby boomers in charge. They have a very righteous feeling about what a newspaper is for, even though anyone could argue that for the past ten years newspapers have been simply following the business model of "local monopolists". In this sense, circulation is simply increased at a reasonable percentage point annually, and then ad rates are increased accordingly. Voila, you have a hugely profitable business.
DOn't get me wrong this is not a bad system, I think its hugely responsible for this final dinosaur of the "mass media" to be the last one standing. While, broadcast television stations and major motion pictures saw their profit margins drop years ago, newspapers soared up until about 2000. To boot the decline of two newspapers in most major cities in the mid eighties, only bolstered Wall Street's confidence in this vehicle. Newspaper companies grew, by salary's and profit and by staff. But as the information needs of a different generation have come to prominence and newsrooms and editorial boards and the big "last one stadning" metorpolitan daily of any big city has become sort of beyond middle age, there is a huge gap. I beleive that generation X and Y, which is brainy enought to compose the IT staff of most newspaper websites, and sexy enough to hit the sales quotas of most newspaper companies, and savvy enough to produce content, must be allowed to take a more high profile role at the different levels of management at large daily newspapers. Believe, all my great teachers were baby boomers so I have nothing against them or any generation, but they retire later in life and have a sense of entre and social justice that is entirely based on social institutions. AS the largest generation in America, I know that they overflowed each institution that they entered and felt the duty to "change" these places so that their needs were met. They should have no problem with smaller (in size not stature) generations coming similarly coming to terms with the quirks of their age. I think the number one job to be done is to support more love between the generations at newspaper staffs, and this will have a trickle down effect on the contents and ability of newspaper companies to meet the needs of the consumer and the businesses they serve in the community.
Posted by: Donna Bulford | August 6, 2006 11:31 PM