Competing Against Luck

Clayton M. Christensen; Taddy  Hall; Karen  Dillon; David S. Duncan

Book | 2016

Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice

by Clayton M. Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon and David S. Duncan

Abstract

The foremost authority on innovation and growth presents a path-breaking book every company needs to transform innovation from a game of chance to one in which they develop products and services that customers want to buy and are willing to purchase at a premium price.
How do companies know how to grow? How can they create products that they are sure customers want to buy? Can innovation be more than a game of hit and miss? Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen has the answer. A generation ago, Christensen revolutionized business with his groundbreaking theory of disruptive innovation. Now, he goes further, offering powerful new insights.
After years of research, Christensen and his co-authors have come to one critical conclusion: our long held maxim—that understanding the customer is the crux of innovation—is wrong. Customers don't buy products or services; they "hire" them to do a job. Understanding customers does not drive innovation success, he argues. Understanding customer jobs does. The "Jobs-to-Be-Done" approach can be seen in some of the world's most respected companies and fast-growing startups, including Amazon, Intuit, Uber, Airbnb, and Chobani yogurt, to name just a few. But this book is not about celebrating these successes—it's about predicting new ones.
The authors contend that by understanding what causes customers to "hire" a product or service, any business can improve its innovation track record, creating products that customers not only want to hire, but that they'll pay premium prices to bring into their lives. Jobs theory offers new hope for growth to companies frustrated by their hit and miss efforts.
This book carefully lays down the authors' provocative framework, providing a comprehensive explanation of the theory and why it is predictive, how to use it in the real world and, most importantly, how not to squander the insights it provides.

Keywords: Disruptive Innovation; Consumer Behavior;

Format: Print

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Citation:

Christensen, Clayton M., Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon, and David S. Duncan. Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice. New York: HarperBusiness, 2016.

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Hospital Equipment Corp. is a very successful maker of hospital beds. Due to outstanding performance in new product development, it grew to dominate its primary market and is searching for other opportunities to grow through new product development. It discovers that its internal system for identifying new, high-growth markets actually screens out some exciting growth possibilities.

After twenty years of growth unprecedented in the sports apparel industry, Under Armour finds itself with a new record to beat: making the leap from $5 to $10 billion in sales — a feat only accomplished to date by competitors Nike and Adidas. At the heart of this challenge is how Under Armour can maintain its brand’s authenticity while adding new products that fuel future growth. The case traces the evolution of Under Armour’s brand and describes how the company chose to extend or not extend its brand into adjacent categories and markets in the past. Now Under Armour needs to decide on their next steps. Should the company focus on its core markets? Should it stretch the brand into more adjacencies? Or should it consider something more radical, like app-related sales through subscriptions and wearable technologies?

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Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice

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