JTBD (Jobs to Be Done): Definition and Meaning

What does JTBD stand for?

JTBD stands for Jobs to Be Done. It’s a framework (really two competing frameworks, but we’ll get to that) for understanding customer motivation and purchase behavior. The premise is simple: people don’t buy products because of who they are. They buy products because they have a “job” they need done, and they “hire” a product to do it.

The classic example, attributed to Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, involves a fast food chain trying to sell more milkshakes. Demographics didn’t help. Customers were all over the map. But when the team studied when and why people bought milkshakes, they found that nearly half of sales happened before 8:30 AM, to solo commuters. The “job” wasn’t “enjoy a dessert.” It was “make my boring 40-minute commute less boring, and keep me full until lunch.” The milkshake’s real competition wasn’t other milkshakes. It was bananas, bagels, and boredom.¹

That reframing is the power of JTBD. It changes the competitive set, the product roadmap, and the marketing message all at once.

The two JTBD frameworks

Here’s something most JTBD content online glosses over: there are actually two distinct schools of thought within Jobs to Be Done, and they approach the concept quite differently.

Jobs as activities (Outcome-Driven Innovation)

The first school comes from Tony Ulwick and his company Strategyn. Ulwick’s approach, which he calls Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI), treats jobs as functional activities that can be broken down into a structured process. A job has steps (define, locate, prepare, confirm, execute, monitor, modify, conclude), and within each step, customers have measurable desired outcomes.

Ulwick’s framework is highly systematic. You map the job, survey customers to quantify which outcomes are over-served and under-served, and use that data to find innovation opportunities. It’s patented, has a specific methodology, and is particularly popular with large product teams that want quantitative rigor.² Think of it as the engineering approach to JTBD.

Jobs as progress (Demand-Side Sales)

The second school comes from Bob Moesta and Chris Spiek, who worked alongside Christensen and developed what’s sometimes called the “demand-side” or “Jobs as Progress” approach. Their core idea is different from Ulwick’s: every purchase is fundamentally a switch. A customer fires an old solution and hires a new one. What matters is understanding why people switch.

In Moesta’s framework, every purchase follows a buyer journey with specific stages, and trigger points advance buyers between stages. There’s a first thought (“something’s not right”), passive looking (“I wonder what’s out there”), active looking (“I’m comparing options”), deciding (“this is the one”), and onboarding (“did I make the right choice?”). At each transition, there are forces pushing and pulling the buyer:

• Push of the current situation. Frustration with the status quo.
• Pull of the new solution. The appeal of something better.
• Anxiety of the new. Fear that the new solution won’t work.
• Habit of the present. Comfort with how things are now.

A purchase happens when the push and pull forces exceed the anxiety and habit forces. The framework gives you tools, particularly the JTBD interview, to uncover those triggers and forces for your specific product.

Which framework should you use?

Both are legitimate, and both claim the JTBD name. In practice, I find the Moesta/Spiek approach more immediately useful for marketing and growth teams. The demand-side framework gives you concrete language for messaging (address the push, amplify the pull, reduce the anxiety), and the interview technique surfaces insights you won’t find in survey data or analytics.

Ulwick’s approach has its place, particularly for product teams doing deep innovation work in complex domains. But for marketing ops, the demand-side model is where the actionable insights live.

How to conduct a JTBD interview

The JTBD interview (in the Moesta/Spiek tradition) is a specific type of qualitative research. You’re not asking customers what features they want. You’re reconstructing the story of their purchase decision.

Here’s the basic structure:

1. Start with the purchase moment. “When did you buy [product]? Walk me through that day.”
2. Work backward to the first thought. “When did you first start thinking about this? What was going on in your life?”
3. Map the timeline. Between first thought and purchase, what happened? When did they start actively looking? What alternatives did they consider?
4. Uncover the forces. What pushed them away from their old solution? What attracted them to yours? What almost stopped them from buying? What habits were hard to break?
5. Look for the trigger. What specific event or moment moved them from passive to active looking?

You typically need 10-12 interviews before clear patterns emerge. The patterns, not individual anecdotes, become your Job to Be Done.

How marketing ops uses JTBD

For marketing operations teams, JTBD provides a framework that directly impacts several operational areas:

Segmentation beyond demographics. Instead of segmenting by company size or industry alone (the ICP approach), you can layer in job-based segments. Two companies in the same industry might have completely different Jobs to Be Done, requiring different messaging tracks in your MAP.

Content strategy by buying timeline. The demand-side timeline (first thought, passive looking, active looking, deciding, onboarding) maps naturally to funnel stages. TOFU content addresses the push and pull forces. MOFU content reduces anxiety. BOFU content overcomes habit.

Lead scoring refinement. Behavioral signals in your marketing automation can map to the buying timeline. Someone downloading a comparison guide is in a different stage than someone reading a “what is [category]?” blog post. JTBD gives you a theoretical framework for why those behaviors matter for lead qualification.

Messaging and positioning. The four forces (push, pull, anxiety, habit) give you a direct template for ad copy, landing pages, and email sequences. Address the push (“tired of X?”), amplify the pull (“imagine Y”), reduce the anxiety (“here’s how we make it easy”), and overcome the habit (“you don’t need to change everything at once”).

JTBD vs. buyer personas

This is a common question, and the short answer is: they’re complementary, not competing.

A buyer persona describes who the customer is, their title, demographics, goals, and challenges. An ICP describes the company-level attributes of your best customers.

JTBD describes why the customer buys. The progress they’re trying to make, the situation that triggered the search, and the forces acting on their decision. Two people with wildly different personas can share the same Job to Be Done.

In practice, the most effective marketing teams use all three: ICP to target the right companies, personas to identify the right contacts, and JTBD to craft the right message.

Origin of the term

The intellectual roots of Jobs to Be Done trace back to Theodore Levitt’s famous observation: “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole.” Clayton Christensen popularized the framework in his work on disruptive innovation at Harvard Business School, particularly in his 2003 book The Innovator’s Solution.³ The term “Jobs to Be Done” became widely adopted after Christensen’s 2016 book Competing Against Luck, co-authored with Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon, and David Duncan.

Meanwhile, Bob Moesta and Chris Spiek developed the demand-side methodology through their consulting work at The Re-Wired Group, codified in Moesta’s 2020 book Demand-Side Sales 101.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does JTBD stand for?

JTBD stands for Jobs to Be Done. It's a product strategy and marketing framework that focuses on the underlying progress a customer is trying to make, rather than on demographics or product categories.

What is the difference between JTBD and buyer personas?

Buyer personas describe who the customer is (demographics, job title, psychographics). JTBD describes why the customer buys, the progress they're trying to make in a specific situation. Two people with completely different demographics can have the same Job to Be Done, and vice versa. The frameworks are complementary, not competing.

How do you identify a customer's Job to Be Done?

The primary method is the JTBD interview, sometimes called a 'switch interview.' You interview recent customers and walk them backward through their purchase decision: what triggered them to start looking, what alternatives they considered, what anxieties almost stopped them, and what finally pushed them to buy. Patterns across interviews reveal the underlying Job.