Identifying the opportunity is never enough. Companies face significant challenges when they seek to introduce products that adequately get the innovation job done. Companies need to carefully balance price and features to deliver a product that people are willing to buy. A staple in the marketing tool kit is the customer survey or focus group designed to identify “what customers want.” All too often, these exercises result in wish lists that if accommodated will create an all-capable, and often very expensive, offering that is desirable to no one.

Understanding how customers determine value can highlight the tradeoffs between features and prices customers will consider tolerable. For example, consider the insights a major consumer health company gleaned through applying the jobs-to-be-done methodology in the area of nutritional products. The company’s initial research efforts surfaced important and unsatisfied jobs ranging from treating heart disease and cancer to maintaining basic health.

The company’s initial inclination was to create a “do everything” product to try to — at least tangentially — stave off many of these conditions. However, more in-depth research identified that consumers wanted solutions specific to them as individuals. A do-everything product would provide too much performance on some dimensions and too little on others. The company recognized this issue and is now pursuing focused formulations for specific high-demand health conditions that tend to coexist in the population.

1. explain what you learned that adds new understanding to product development and product management

2. explain the role of the jobs-to-be-done framework and how it can be used for segmentation and targeting (in the "science of marketing")

3. include examples from real companies that illustrate the points in the above questions.