Select a Market
The Outcome-Driven Innovation process does not begin with an idea. It begins with selecting an attractive market to pursue and grow. Companies often make the mistake of investing in an idea only to find out later that their investment cannot be recouped because the market is too small or otherwise unattractive.
In order to grow, companies must pursue markets that have the potential to generate the amount of new revenue needed. You can’t have a billion dollar idea in a million dollar market. Market analysis, market sizing and market selection tools, which are critical to success, don’t always reveal a market’s true potential. Part of the problem lies in how companies define “market."
People buy products and services to get a job done. However, companies often define a market in terms of the product employed (the cell phone market) or the technology used in a product (the semiconductor market) as opposed to the job. Consequently, traditional market sizing is flawed because it uses the solution rather than the job to calculate the size of the opportunity.
From a jobs-to-be-done perspective it makes sense to define a market as a group of job executors and the job they are trying to get done. For example, parents (job executors) who are trying to pass on life lessons to their children (the job) constitute a market.
Thinking about markets from this perspective, a company can more accurately determine which markets and ideas to pursue. A market is attractive for pursuit when it consists of a large number of job executors who are executing a job frequently. Further, they are dissatisfied with their ability to execute the job effectively and willing to pay handsomely to get the job done perfectly. Thinking about market sizing from this perspective has important implications as it becomes possible to size new and emerging markets – markets from a product perspective that do not yet exist.
Strategyn’s jobs-based market sizing and market selection framework enable a company to effectively select which markets it should grow, enter and exit. Getting this right is the first step to successful growth through innovation.
