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• Article | Harvard Business Review | September–October 2020

  When It's Time to Pivot, What's Your Story?: How to Sell Stakeholders on a New Strategy

  Rory McDonald and Robert Bremner

  To succeed, a new company must rally investors, staff, customers, and the media around a good story. But often that narrative turns out to be wrong, and entrepreneurs realize they need to change direction. How that shift is communicated can have a huge impact on a venture’s future. Through extensive research with founders, innovation chiefs, analysts, and journalists, the authors have identified stratagems for maintaining stakeholder support during pivots. Early on, entrepreneurs should avoid a focus on overly specific solutions and instead present the big picture. When changing course, they can then signal continuity by explaining how the new plan fits with the original vision. Once the reboot has happened, it’s critical to be conciliatory and empathetic to stakeholders who may feel abandoned. Employees and customers are far more willing to remain loyal if given guidance about how they’ll be affected and if leaders seem to genuinely care about their situation.

  Citation:

  McDonald, Rory, and Robert Bremner. "When It's Time to Pivot, What's Your Story?: How to Sell Stakeholders on a New Strategy." Harvard Business Review 98, no. 5 (September–October 2020): 98–105.  View Details

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• Module Note | July 2019 (Revised August 2020)

  Targeting Nonconsumption: Who Are the Best Customers for Our Products?

  Citation:

  Christensen, Clayton M. "Targeting Nonconsumption: Who Are the Best Customers for Our Products?" Harvard Business School Module Note 420-015, July 2019. (Revised August 2020.)  View Details

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• Module Note | August 2010 (Revised July 2020)

  Integrating Around the Job to Be Done

  Clayton Christensen, Rory McDonald, Laura E Day, Shaye Roseman, Clayton Christensen, Rory McDonald, Laura E Day, Shaye Roseman, Clayton Christensen, Rory McDonald, Laura E Day and Shaye Roseman

  Unlike traditional market segmentations that are based on a correlation of product sales or service with the attributes of the purchaser (such as age, gender, income level, and education level), jobs-based segmentation seeks to understand the causal roots of purchase—when a buyer needs to "hire" a product or service to get a "job" done. This note details the thought process and the methodology behind a jobs-based segmentation and provides numerous examples. It highlights three levels in the architecture of a job: 1) What is the fundamental job or problem the customer is facing? This includes political, functional, emotional, and social dimensions; 2) What are the experiences in purchase and use that, if all provided, would sum up to nailing the job perfectly? (The "hiring criteria"); and 3) What do we need to integrate, and how must we knit those things together, so that we can provide these experiences?

  Keywords: Integration planning; Jobs; Market segmentation; Customer Satisfaction; Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Problems and Challenges; Integration; Segmentation;

  Citation:

  Christensen, Clayton, Rory McDonald, Laura E Day, and Shaye Roseman. "Integrating Around the Job to Be Done." Harvard Business School Module Note 611-004, August 2010. (Revised July 2020.)  View Details

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