What are the key principles of Outcome-Driven Innovation?

"Strive to build a car and not a faster horse." Determining job-to-be-done is important for Outcome Driven Innovation. The aim should be to determine the crux of the problem for each customer persona and determine the favourable outcome for each, to build innovative products .

We approach innovation from a human centered design perspective. Step 1 is to understand the market. That involves a market scan and talking with experts. Step 2 we call "empathy"; talking in depth to stakeholders to understand their needs, wants, and frustrations with products and services in their context. Step 3 focuses on massive ideation, ideally with people outside the industry. Volume is the key here. We then down select using feasibility, desirability, and viability as our vetting guide. From there (4) we create narratives, storyboards, and/or prototypes for quantitative feedback. From this bake off we are ready to head to MVP. We routinely double back as we test & learn. A proven process resulting in winning concepts.

It's not just important to know what the customer wants but to what degree does the solution fit the problem. E g. When a customer wants to be told about a certain event, many a times a simple WhatsApp message will work, rather than building out a complex product to convey the same information. Context of the problem helps determine the scope of the problem and what kind of solution is the best for it. And we must be wary of overloading the user with information. When a customer wants a burger, let's just give them a burger and not a 5 course dinner.

Through many years of testing, it’s proven that what a consumer says and what a consumer actually does may be two different things- so it’s important to consider how to test concepts both qualitatively and quantitatively as much as possible, when possible. And it’s also important to look longitudinally at the results, which can be a challenge for many companies and teams who have to report results on a quarterly basis. Short-term decisions can impact long-term gains. It’s great when people have the agility to adjust without wholesale abandoning what could be a long term gain. Thus the ODI can hopefully be realized.

One thing I've found very useful is to put yourself in the customer's shoes and think from a broad perspective with a touch of empathy. Identifying and communicating the jobs to be done is crucial but they will be meaningful if you are able to connect with the customer on their level and exhibit empathy towards their goals.

In my experience, customer focused innovation is critical to increase the probability of that idea becoming commercially successful. Sometimes, we get excited about a particular technology such as AI/ML and all the potential possibilities, but it’s critical to know how we apply this technology to solve a true customer problem or need in a dramatically positive way. So, it’s essential to have an outcome driven innovation culture and mind set.

While ODI rightly emphasizes the importance of the customer's job-to-be-done, it's equally important for product managers to recognize the context in which these jobs exist. As things rapidly change, customer behaviors and expectations can shift due to advancements in tech or new trends. As a product manager, always make sure to regularly revisit and reassess the defined job-to-be-done. This continuous feedback loop, combined with ODI, helps make sure that your products remain relevant and change with customer needs. Equally, by looking at secondary tasks related to the primary job-to-be-done, you can identify additional opportunities for innovation and product enhancements.

Often a times this happens when stakeholders involved present you with a solution and you know that is not optimal. Finding that optimality while maintaining a holistic approach to the problem with key focus on customer’s ease to use might be the defining factor for outcome driven innovation.

The key way to achieve Outcome Driven Innovation is not compromising on the user value -Not to retrofit the product to achieve user task. Rather it has to be path of most efficient way of accomplishing the user task. For example, if the user can be notified about an incident with required information rather sending notification with little information and asking the user to open the app for required information.

Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI) is a strategic framework pioneered by Tony Ulwick that revolutionizes the innovation process by anchoring it to the customer’s job-to-be-done. It’s a philosophy and a method that roots the creation of products and services in the specific outcomes customers are trying to achieve. The essence of ODI is that success in innovation is not about focusing on the product or technology itself, but on the progress that the customer is trying to make in a given circumstance. Here is a detailed exposition of ODI principles: The Essence of Jobs-to-Be-Done Uncovering Customer Outcomes Outcome-Based Market Segmentation Identifying Opportunities for Innovation Prioritizing Outcomes for Innovation Risk Reduction

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Defining the outcomes at the outset is one important principle to help customer achieve the value they strive to. This may be trivial for us however it aligns to their overall strategy and vision and sometimes to the commitments made my leadership. I always ensure I work with customer to pen down the desires, apply thr Must have, Shkuld have, could have and would have rule to filter and prioritise them and then move ahead. As a next step I put together some measureable outcomes that help customers realise those benefits in a more tangible way.

Once we have established that customer is willing to pay to solve a problem, then comes to question of what is the outcome. One good way to find this out is to observe customer as they perform this task and as "WHY" they are doing what they are doing. Sometimes, people may ask you for certain solution with their limited knowledge. But there can be better ways to solve that.

In my experience it's good to have a finite list of outcomes. I've defined outcomes as "answers to customer business challenges that our product is capable of solving". By making this list finite, you create a common language that can be persistent across the customer journey. Impact then are the specific metrics and benchmarks across those finite outcomes.

Don't forget to think about how the individual is compensated which can drastically affect behavior. And don't ignore the emotional aspect of how you can help someone progress their career.

In my opinion, no customer is the same. Identify what success looks like for your desired personas and conduct interviews with them to rank them. Not all outcomes are equally important to the customer. Use surveys or interviews to determine which outcomes are critical and which are nice to have. Prioritize innovation efforts around the outcomes that matter most to customers.

Think of a restaurant where the chef comes out to each table and personally asks customers about their food preferences. This interaction helps the chef understand precisely what the customers want. Similarly, ODI focuses on understanding customer needs with precision.

You need to be careful - customers often describe what they want (e.g. cheap, perfect, fast). You need to make sure that outcomes are ordered. We often want multiple outcomes. Focus on translating wants into prioritized needs.

As a VP of Product Development, the second principle of Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI) is key 🗝️. It's about understanding our customers' "desired outcomes" 🎯—the measurable metrics they use to gauge their success in achieving their "job-to-be-done." Outcomes aren't about features but specific, measurable criteria that express what our customers expect and prefer. For example, a smartphone user's outcome might be reducing unwanted calls, not a specific call blocker feature. In today's competitive landscape, aligning our product development with customer outcomes is essential for success! 💪

Outcomes are the return values of the customer's 'main()' function—they are what success looks like in their script. You must discern not just the explicit returns but also the implicit exceptions they want to avoid. It’s about the totality of their success criteria, mapped and prioritized.

This "space" is really for inventors and creative minds. In my experience I am more a developer of ideas than a creator. Satisfaction in this case is the key of creating any new revolutionary product.

At the core of the Opportunity Landscape is the recognition that customers buy products and services to get jobs done. These jobs are tasks or objectives they are aiming to achieve, which can be functional, emotional, or social. The first step in constructing an Opportunity Landscape is to articulate these jobs in a way that is both comprehensive and precise. Once the job is defined, the next step is to break it down into specific outcomes that customers desire when trying to complete the job. These outcomes are the variables customers use to measure success. They are not just features or benefits but are expressed in terms of the functional and emotional progress the customer seeks.

Just to be clear here - you can have the best strategies, the best plans, the best tactics but in my opinion without the right company culture and mindset you have not achieve outcome based innovation. Have a nice day!

This is essentially a visual representation of where your product stands in terms of market potential and competitive positioning, all centered around what your customers desire to achieve. The opportunity landscape itself comprises two critical dimensions: importance and satisfaction Importance: Satisfaction: Gaps and Opportunities for Innovation: These gaps represent fertile ground for innovation. It's in these areas that customers are deeply concerned about something but existing solutions fall short. Validation of Product Assumptions and Hypotheses: It provides a clear picture of where your product's potential lies and whether it aligns with what truly matters to your customers.

Prioritize opportunities for innovation This step involves assessing each unmet outcome for its potential impact on the market and its alignment with your business's strengths and goals. By focusing on outcomes that are both highly important to the customer and poorly satisfied by existing solutions, you can pinpoint areas where there's a strong demand for better solutions. Prioritizing in this manner ensures that your product development efforts target areas with the highest potential return on investment, allowing you to create products that truly resonate with customer needs.

In the world of product management, understanding the Opportunity Landscape is crucial for innovation. Airbnb is a shining example. They saw a gap in the market for short-term accommodations and transformed the industry. As explorers, we research, prioritize, and collaborate to turn opportunities into valuable products. Success relies on staying customer-centric, data-driven, and aligned with company's strategy. The Opportunity Landscape is vast, and the potential for innovation is boundless.

The opportunity landscape is the set of unmet customer needs and opportunities that exist in the market. It is important to identify the opportunity landscape in order to focus your innovation efforts on the areas where you can make the biggest impact. Example: The opportunity landscape for smartphones might include developing new features that make it easier for customers to stay connected with loved ones, access information, and be productive.

According to Tony Ulwick, whom I had interviewed in my podcast, a market is a collection of individuals who are united by a common job they need to accomplish. Getting this right is especially crucial for startups. Some key questions to ask to evaluate the market: 1. How big is this group of people trying to get the job done? Is it 30, 000 people or is it 300 million people? 2. How frequently do people get the job done? Is it once a year or five times a day? 3. Is the population of job executors growing or shrinking? 4. Are people executing this job highly underserved with current solutions, or are they satisfied with what exists today?

The ODI approach is indeed transformative. In the FinTech AI/ML domain, how do you see the interplay between data-driven insights and customer-reported importance influencing the opportunity landscape? Additionally, how can we ensure that the rapidly evolving technological landscape and regulatory environment are reflected in the satisfaction dimension, thus keeping the mapping current and actionable?

One thing that I have found helpful is thinking about stacking capabilities that are needed. I like thinking about my foothold position where I can get initial buyers to prove my solution with an upward march to greater value (number of customers & total value).

Using segmenting criteria is a fundamental concept in Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI) and is crucial for understanding customer needs and preferences. Here's a breakdown of the concept and its importance: 1. Definition of Segmenting Criteria 2. Not Demographic, Geographic, or Psychographic 3. Examples of Segmenting Criteria - Traditional Demographic Segmentation - Criteria-based Segmentation 4. Importance of Using Segmenting Criteria - Customer-Centric - Customized Solutions - Competitive Advantage - Resource Allocation -Innovation and Development Using segmenting criteria in Outcome-Driven Innovation is a customer-focused approach that allows you to categorize customers based on the specific factors that impact their desired outcomes.

Behavioral, situational and attitudinal factors underpin demographics in a lot of scenarios, so it is definitely best to focus on the former. This way, companies can focus on what truly matters to the end user of the product and tailor their offering more precisely.

In applying ODI's fourth principle within AI/ML-driven FinTech products, how do we ensure our segmenting criteria remain dynamic, adapting to evolving financial behaviors and market trends? Moreover, in a sector where trust and security are paramount, what balance should we strike between personalized offerings and the need for privacy? It'd be enlightening to see examples where real-time data has been effectively used to refine these behavioral segments and enhance customer satisfaction without compromising security. How are others tackling these challenges?

The segmenting criteria are the factors that can be used to divide the customer base into different groups. It is important to segment the customer base in order to develop products and services that are tailored to the specific needs of each group. Example: The segmenting criteria for smartphones might include demographics (e.g., age, gender, income), psychographics (e.g., lifestyle, interests), and usage patterns (e.g., how often the customer uses their smartphone, what features they use most).

Empathy and customer psychology is critical here. Take a high-stress commute: here, a traveler's immediate needs—like punctuality—trump usual preferences. Stress alters priorities, leading to choices based more on context and emotional state than on habitual behavior. To truly meet these needs, a business must empathize, understand, and predict how emotions and stress shape decisions. This empathetic approach ensures solutions not only fit the customer's practical job-to-be-done but also resonate with their psychological state, leading to products that are genuinely valued in specific, often challenging, situations.

As a VP of Product, the fourth ODI principle, "Using segmenting criteria," is a game-changer 🚀. It's all about understanding what drives our customers' desired outcomes. These aren't your typical demographics; they're behavioral, situational, or attitudinal factors that shape what customers want and how they measure satisfaction. For instance, when dealing with smartphone users, it could be about communication frequency, not age or income. By applying these criteria, we can group customers effectively based on their outcome preferences and target the most promising segments 📊. In today's competitive landscape, this approach help us tailor our products to diverse customer needs and drive business growth 📈.

This is all about a user persona. Segmenting doesn't always mean bifurcating the user base into age, gender, demography etc. but also into the emotions involved while hiring the product. As a PM. one should have empathy towards the user's emotions and psychology.

ODI might not always be readily available due to these constraints, and it's essential to recognize this reality. In such cases, it's crucial for product managers to use ODI principles in conjunction with pragmatic decision-making.

It's important to know who your customer is, the segmenting criteria of the customer helps understand the potential of the market and category. The customers for any product are segmented as regular, occasional and situational. Strategy has to be different from one another for each of the segmented customers, if the plan is to address all the customers. How we wish to position our brand will have a great influence and impact.

Segmentation here is not dividing by demographic, but by the different 'user stories' within the job-to-be-done. Each segment may have a different stack or require a different function to achieve the same return. The key is identifying which 'libraries' are universal and which are specific to a segment.

As a VP of Product, the fifth ODI principle, "Creating the product concept," is where the magic happens ✨. It's about distilling your product idea into a clear and compelling description that speaks to the customer's needs. It's not about detailed specs or prototypes, but a simple statement summarizing your product's value, features, and benefits. For example, a product concept for smartphone users: "A smart assistant that filters calls and messages based on user preferences and context." 📱 In today's fast-paced market, the product concept is the cornerstone of product development. It ensures innovation aligns with customer demands and feasibility 🚀.

Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI) is a customer-centric approach that emphasizes delivering specific outcomes and benefits, rather than just features. By defining clear outcome statements, using data-driven metrics, and continuously iterating based on customer feedback, ODI ensures that products truly meet customers’ needs and drive market success.

- Product Concept in ODI: ODI emphasizes creating a clear and compelling product concept. - Addressing Customer Needs: The product concept is centered around addressing the customer's job-to-be-done and their desired outcomes. -Not Technical Details: It's not a detailed specification, prototype, or mockup but a high-level description of your product's value, key features, and benefits. -Clear and Compelling: A well-crafted product concept is clear and resonates with customers. -Testing and Validation -Fit and Feasibility -Customer-Centric Approach: ODI starts with understanding real customer needs. -Innovation and Success: Guides innovation by focusing on delivering what matters most to customers. -Value Proposition:

The product concept is the high-level vision for the product or service that you are developing. It should describe what the product or service is, who it is for, and what benefits it will provide to customers. Example: The product concept for a new smartphone might be to develop a phone that is more durable and has a longer battery life than existing smartphones.

In the FinTech AI/ML domain, how might we refine a product concept to not only fulfill but anticipate the 'jobs-to-be-done'? For instance, could a concept like an AI-driven financial concierge that proactively tailors financial advice and risk management, based on real-time economic shifts and individual spending patterns, resonate? How do we balance the predictive power of AI with the need for user control and transparency in our product concepts?

In my experience, you should be able to share this to your target customer and get them to nod & say that I would pay for this value.

This is the part where the user's job is to be done and the desired outcome is conceptualised into a product. The product concept need not be very technical but should convey the story.

Here are a few key takeaways: Listen and Learn: Always start by listening to your customers. Even when they have specific demands, there's valuable insight to be gained from understanding the problems they're trying to solve. Iterate and Experiment: In the pursuit of ODI, don't be afraid to iterate and experiment with your products. Communication: Effective communication is the linchpin. Engage with your customers openly, explaining the benefits of a broader, outcome-driven approach. Data-Driven Decisions: Utilize data to guide your decisions. ODI can be data-intensive, helping you measure the impact of your product changes and demonstrating the value of an outcome-focused approach.

Once the initial concept is developed, it's essential to validate its relevance and appeal to the targeted segments. This iterative process involves presenting the concept to potential users, gathering their insights, and adjusting the product's features and value proposition accordingly. By doing so, you ensure that the final product aligns closely with the customers' desired outcomes and genuinely solves their job-to-be-done. This feedback loop not only reduces the risk of product-market misfit but also enhances the product's potential for success in the market.

Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI) is a framework that prioritizes understanding the customer's job-to-be-done (JTBD), the fundamental task they seek to accomplish. Key principles include identifying all the customer's needs related to the JTBD, categorizing customers based on how they measure success, and prioritizing these needs to guide innovation. ODI eschews traditional demographics for segmentation, focusing instead on needs-based groups that share similar challenges. This approach directs product development towards features that customers value most, ensuring that the innovation directly addresses their unmet outcomes, thus increasing the chances of market success.

Think it is key here not to be too rigid in following the framework and tailor your approach based on the complexity of the problem. For a well defined and structured area it is often easy to define clear outcomes which already have established measurement methods and ensure that every step ensures value delivered to those outcomes. For other more unstructured issues perhaps it is more important to build towards measurement of desired outcomes before focusing immediately on value delivery. It’s important to throw some caution to the wind (in a measured and risk mitigated manner) and be agile to get to an outcome when appropriate

Great execution of a product starts with a roadmap — a strategic overview that plots the course of product development. Traditionally product roadmaps have been a list of features to be developed over a set timeline, but with the rapid pace in which markets evolve, product teams require a more flexible, dynamic approach. Enter outcome-based roadmapping. Unlike traditional roadmaps that focus on how fast you are building, outcome-based roadmaps focus on why you’re building. They emphasize the value a product brings to its users and how it contributes to business objectives. This holistic approach enables product teams to adapt to changes, customer feedback, and new insights, ensuring the product remains relevant and valuable over time.

Persona based approach and establishing scalable mechanisms is key to measuring product outcomes. 1. Persona focussed :: Product outcomes should be holistic considering all personas involved including end customers, partners, and other business stakeholders 2. Continuous approach :: Establishing mechanisms to baseline the measures, defining systemic approach to capture and report is crucial to driven data driven insights for product growth

Outcome-driven innovation is a product development approach that focuses on achieving specific, customer-centric outcomes. Its key principles include: 1. Customer Needs: Identify unmet customer needs and prioritize them. 2. Outcome Definition: Define desired outcomes or job-to-be-done. 3. Metrics-Driven: Use quantifiable metrics to measure success. 4. Hypothesis Testing: Continuously test and refine hypotheses. 5. Rapid Iteration: Iterate quickly to adapt to changing customer needs. 6. Data-Backed Decisions: Base decisions on data, not assumptions. 7. Market Validation: Validate solutions in the target market. These are some approaches which creates products and services that better satisfy customer demands.

An outcome-based roadmap builds the long-term vision for a product and its features. These features could provide value to the customer and organization backed by data analysis. Additionally, an outcome-based roadmap helps build qualitative features valuable to the customer, which are seldom deprioritized because they do not provide incremental monetary value.

It is all about outcome rather than output. Outcome-based roadmaps are like OKRs for your project. The format differs, but the goal is the same.

The outcome-based roadmap in Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI) centers on delivering specific customer outcomes, not just features. It involves identifying desired outcomes through customer research and designing a strategic plan to achieve them. This approach ensures alignment with customer needs, encourages ongoing feedback, and promotes agility in product development.

The outcome-based roadmap isn't just a plan; it's a strategy. It's about building products that truly resonate with customers, driving success in the market. By embracing Outcome-Driven Innovation and this outcome-based approach, we're not just creating successful products; we're fostering satisfied, loyal customers. In the ever-changing world of product management, consider adopting the outcome-based roadmap as your guiding star. It's your path to delivering products that make a real difference.

In conclusion, Outcome-Driven Innovation is undeniably a powerful methodology to create customer-centric products. However, it's crucial to understand that in certain situations, we may have to navigate the fine line between fulfilling immediate customer demands and thinking innovatively for the long-term benefit. By finding the right balance, we can maximize the value we provide to our customers and our businesses.

From my point of view it's always the best if you don't end up focusing on the release date instead it's more important that the quality is great. There a PM often needs to remind the business side what is more important.

In my view any product that creates value to the persona using it will always succeed in long run. Because company's value creation activities is directly proportional to the customer-defined metrics. Innvovation done with the consideration of customer needs is one of the most successful approach.

In our product development journey, we embraced Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI) wholeheartedly. Our team went for a few sprints focused on understanding and defining our customer's "job-to-be-done" and their desired outcomes. We dove deep into the market, conducted extensive empathy interviews, and engaged in massive ideation sessions. During these alternate sprints, we didn't create detailed product specifications or prototypes; instead, we honed in on our product concept, a simple yet compelling description of how we could help customers achieve their desired outcomes better.

More to consider: - deliverability at scale - costs of delivering - how to get together a GTM strategy to take the innovation to market, again, at scale

Appreciate the MVP! In many cases, non-product internal stakeholders do not understand the true value of building and failing fast. We all fall into the trap of believing that our ideas and perceptions of what a product should look like are always correct, especially if backed by hand-picked data that validates those perceptions. At the end of the day, only the end user decides what works and what doesn't; being able to collectively agree on what an MVP should look like, and then work towards that as quickly as possible is the most robust approach to validating a hypothesis.

Jeff Bezos says-"Customers are always beautifully, wonderfully dissatisfied....Even when they don’t yet know it, customers want something better, and your desire to delight customers will drive you to invent on their behalf.” Amazon as a company places 'customer obsession' as central to all that we do; I also lean into it for decisiveness and(or) to tie-break dilemmas. I also advocate for customer journey mapping to truly get into customers' shoes and understand their perspective- helps create a truly differentiated CX.  It's equally important to study how choices/needs evolve so that a business can pivot and stay relevant, extending the offerings' utility in-line with demand.

The "principles" listed here, read more like actions or strategy rather than principles. I would consider rewriting them to sound more like a rule or a guideline rather than an "action". Here is an example of changing the first principle from... "The first principle of ODI is to define the customer's job-to-be-done, which is the goal they are trying to achieve or the problem they are trying to solve with your product. " to "The first principle of ODI is to prioritize product development around the customer's "job-to-be-done," which represents the objective they aim to accomplish or the challenge they seek to address through your product."

Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI) is about centering product development on the outcomes customers want to achieve. Key principles include understanding customers' jobs-to-be-done, prioritizing outcomes that are underserved, and creating solutions that help customers get these jobs done better. For example, at a startup, small businesses struggle with invoicing. Developing a tool that automates this process, significantly reduces administrative burden and increases satisfaction.

ODI is invaluable when engaging customers and users in discovery discussions and workshops. Often, they come to the session locked into a solution, and pressing them on their JTBD, why it's needed, and exploring "What if...?" possibilities usually leads to an A-ha! moment for both you and them.

The basic mistake is asking users what they think about a given functionality or how they solved a problem. It is very easy for them to "suggest" the right solution. It's better to ask what problems they have, why it is a problem, etc. The solution does not have to be innovative in any sophisticated way - it just needs to be, for example, more intuitive than the competition.

Outcome Hierarchies: Creating a hierarchical structure of customer outcomes to understand the relationships between higher-level and lower-level outcomes, allowing for more effective product development. Customer Feedback Loops: Establishing processes for collecting and incorporating customer feedback into product development, ensuring continuous improvement and customer-centricity.