Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI)

Ulwick / Strategyn's quantitative operationalisation of Jobs-to-Be-Done. Where Christensen's JTBD is narrative, ODI is metric-based: it decomposes a job into a job map, extracts desired-outcome statements with strict syntax, scores each on importance × satisfaction, and ranks unmet needs with the Opportunity Algorithm. (sources/2009-ulwick-what-is-odi)

Where it sits

ODI is the methodological backbone Ulwick has built since the mid-1990s.
It predates Christensen's public JTBD writing; Christensen cited Ulwick in HBR Jan 2002.
ODI is one strand of frameworks/jtbd; the other is Christensen's narrative strand.

The five operational artefacts

1. Job Map (universal 8-step structure)

"All functional jobs are processes and can be analyzed as such." (sources/2009-ulwick-what-is-odi, p. 10)

Step	Sub-actions
Define	Plan · Select · Determine
Locate	Gather · Access · Receive
Prepare	Set Up · Organize · Examine
Confirm	Validate · Prioritize · Decide
Execute	Perform · Transact · Administer
Monitor	Verify · Track · Check
Modify	Update · Adjust · Maintain
Conclude	Store · Finish · Close

Job map ≠ process map: job map is the needs view (what the customer is trying to get done); process map is the solution view (what the company actually does). See Bettencourt & Ulwick, "The Customer-Centered Innovation Map", HBR May 2008.

Typical dimensions: 8–12 process steps per job, 6–12 needs per step, 50–150 desired outcomes total.

2. Hierarchy of Customer Needs

Core Functional Job
 ├── Other Functional Jobs (directly related · indirectly related)
 ├── Emotional Jobs (personal · social)
 └── Consumption Chain Jobs (12): Purchase · Receive · Install · Set Up ·
      Learn to Use · Interface · Transport · Store · Maintain · Upgrade ·
      Replace · Dispose
Core Functional Job
 ├── Other Functional Jobs (directly related · indirectly related)
 ├── Emotional Jobs (personal · social)
 └── Consumption Chain Jobs (12): Purchase · Receive · Install · Set Up ·
      Learn to Use · Interface · Transport · Store · Maintain · Upgrade ·
      Replace · Dispose

Each consumption-chain job has its own job map and need statements.

3. Desired-Outcome Statement syntax

[Direction of improvement] [Unit of measure] [Object of control] [Contextual clarifier] [Example of object control]

Examples (corn farmer):

"Minimise the time it takes for the corn seeds to germinate"
"Increase the percentage of plants that emerge at the same time"

Strict syntax eliminates terminology variance that would otherwise corrupt importance/satisfaction ratings.

4. Opportunity Algorithm

Opportunity = Importance + max(Importance − Satisfaction, 0)

(First published HBR Jan 2002, "Turn Customer Input into Innovation.") Scale: 1–10 on both Importance and Satisfaction. Thresholds:

>10 — solid opportunity
>12 — high opportunity
>15 — extreme opportunity

Plotting Importance (x) × Satisfaction (y) yields the Opportunity Landscape — segments: Appropriately Served, Overserved (ripe for disruption), Underserved (innovation opportunity).

Also supports opportunity-based segmentation: find sub-populations with different unmet-need profiles.

5. Six growth strategies (once unmet needs are known)

Add features to existing platform → help core job done better.
Add features to existing platform → help related jobs get done.
New platform → core job done better/cheaper.
New platform → core + related jobs.
New platform → new job executor for core.
New platform → new executor for core + related.

Claimed outcome: 70–90% success rate (vs 70–90% failure rate of conventional processes); 19 years of methodology development across hundreds of engagements (sources/2009-ulwick-what-is-odi, pp. 8, 17).

Relation to BPM

The most direct BPM bridge in the JTBD literature:

"All functional jobs are processes." Ulwick literally says a job decomposes into process steps; the job map is structurally a BPMN-minus-gateways flow from the customer's side of the transaction.
Job map as outside-in BPMN. Running an ODI job map alongside an internal as-is BPMN (methods/process-discovery-methods) reveals where the company's process misaligns with the customer's job — the same seams sources/2016-christensen-jobs-to-be-done identifies in the SNHU case.
Opportunity algorithm for process pain prioritisation. Importance + max(Importance − Satisfaction, 0) transfers cleanly to scoring activity-level pain points by business-value × process-performance gap. (Transfer is plausible but unverified against BPM literature.)
Consumption chain jobs ≈ end-to-end scope. Purchase → Dispose is a customer-side lifecycle parallel to Sharp's TRAC end-to-end framing (sources/2014-sharp-using-scope-models).

Cross-references

frameworks/jtbd — parent framework.
sources/2009-ulwick-what-is-odi — primary source.
sources/2016-christensen-jobs-to-be-done — narrative-strand counterpart.
entities/tony-ulwick · entities/clayton-christensen
concepts/business-process — the other definition of "process" ODI maps against.
methods/process-discovery-methods · syntheses/qualitative-discovery-method-selection-matrix

Open questions

Empirical validation of the 86% success rate outside Strategyn's self-reporting (unverified).
Mapping from ODI desired-outcome syntax to BPM performance measure definitions in Dumas et al. 2018 (time, cost, quality, flexibility) — looks isomorphic but not formally established.
Whether ODI's strict syntax can be learned by a generic LLM well enough to auto-generate outcome statements from interview transcripts.