Competing Against Luck

The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice

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

English language

Published Oct. 31, 2016 by HarperCollins Publishers.

ISBN:: 978-0-06-243563-7

(8 reviews)

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 customers not only want to buy, but are willing to pay premium prices for.

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 has 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.

Christensen contends 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 Christensen’s 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.

3 editions

Ben Waber reviewed Competing Against Luck by Clayton M. Christensen

An Intriguing Approach to Understanding Customer Needs

3 stars

This case study-heavy book explains the jobs-to-be-done theory of product development, providing a powerful framework for businesses hoping to deeply understand their true market. Some of the case studies here have aged extremely poorly - one of the sections on margarine, in particular, would have lead to countless more deaths if Christensen's advice was heeded, for example - and most of the cases could have used a bit more reflection on tradeoffs from tying success too closely to particular jobs-to-be-done. I also wasn't a fan of the attribution of success of some companies to this approach rather than other, more structural factors, with examples from digital platforms being particularly egregious. That being said, this book provides practical and useful grounding for folks in the business community, and if you're not familiar with this approach you should definitely pick this up

Santhosh Guru reviewed Competing Against Luck by Clayton M. Christensen

Review of 'Competing Against Luck' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

A good framework to think about solutions/features/products. It will definitely add value in customer development process. But I felt the book was too long, a detailed 4000 or 4500 words article would have been sufficient. Would have been nice, if some sample customer interview questions to unravel the jobs or a starter kit was included in the book.