Finding the job for your product

Clayton Christensen wrote an [interesting article](http://sloanreview.mit.edu/smr/issue/2007/spring/01/) ([full article](http://sloanreview.mit.edu/smr/issue/2007/spring/01/48301W.pdf)) in the MIT Sloan Business Review about “finding the right job for your product”, where “job” is the actual task people are using it for.

Drucker chimes in:

> Peter Drucker got it right: “The customer rarely buys what the business thinks it sells him.” Companies almost always find that their customers are using their product for different jobs than the company had intended. – page 5

And the explanation for unexpectedly high numbers of milkshakes sold for breakfast:

> When the researcher asked what other products the customers might hire to do this job [of providing a single-handed interesting meal], it turned out the milkshake did the job better than any of its competitors. Bagels were dry; with cream cheese or jam, they resulted in sticky fingers and gooey steering wheels. Donuts didn’t carry people past the 10 a.m. hunger attack. Bananas didn’t last long enough…It didn’t matter that the milkshake wasn’t a particularly healthful food because that wasn’t the job it was being hired to do. – page 3