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Publications
  • 2016
  • Book

Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice

By: Clayton M. Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon and David S. Duncan
  • Format:Print
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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

Citation

Christensen, Clayton M., Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon, and David S. Duncan. Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice. New York: Harper Business, 2016.
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More from the Authors

    • December 2024
    • Faculty Research

    Disruptive Innovation: How Can We Beat Our Most Powerful Competitors? (Abridged)

    By: Clayton M. Christensen and Derek C. M. van Bever
    • December 2019
    • Faculty Research

    An Illustration of Resource Allocation in Strategy Making: The Case of Intel

    By: Clayton M. Christensen
    • December 2019 (Revised November 2021)
    • Faculty Research

    Managing the Strategy Development Process: Deliberate vs. Emergent Strategy

    By: Clayton M. Christensen
More from the Authors
  • Disruptive Innovation: How Can We Beat Our Most Powerful Competitors? (Abridged) By: Clayton M. Christensen and Derek C. M. van Bever
  • An Illustration of Resource Allocation in Strategy Making: The Case of Intel By: Clayton M. Christensen
  • Managing the Strategy Development Process: Deliberate vs. Emergent Strategy By: Clayton M. Christensen
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