As a way of providing a "good enough" communications platform, the Huntsville (Ala.) Times has created a wiki (more here about what a wiki is) that will serve for the moment as a feedback mechanism and discussion forum for all its employees to use. On it they've included:

• A page of jobs-to-be-done interview questions


• A place for employees to post JTBD interview feedback


• A forum for feedback from a user's perspective about their Web site


• A place for people to list other Internet sites they think might be useful sources of ideas


• A place for feedback on some of their new initiatives

The paper has also branded its Newspaper Next initiative -- GetN²It -- as an invitation for everybody to get involved in what it's now calling Newspaper Next Innovative Times!

Another jobs-to-be-done solution from the forward-looking Roanoke (Va.) Times, which has created a Web site called BigLickU to connect college students across all the institutions of higher learning in the area.

To create BigLickU, they:

• Took an existing product, ran it through the JTBD lens and determined that it wasn't working;


• Asked students about their JTBD needs, listened, and created an entirely new product that seems to meet those needs extremely well;


• Took advantage of the fact that no one else in the market would be motivated to create such a product;


• Started small by using students in the target audience to help design and run the site. The BIgLickU office is actually near a campus, rather than in the Roanoke Times facility.