What is Outcome-Driven Innovation® (ODI)? (Ulwick / Strategyn, 2009)

Whitepaper by Anthony W. Ulwick, founder of Strategyn, operationalising Jobs-to-be-Done into a measurable, quantitative innovation process. Ulwick claims 19 years of methodology development (so back to ~1990, pre-Christensen's popularisation). Christensen credited Ulwick in the 2002 HBR article "Turn Customer Input into Innovation".

Why most innovation processes are broken (pp. 3–7)

Two failing paradigms:

Ideas-first (~68% of firms, via gated / phase-gate processes). "Generate many ideas, fail fast, filter." Mathematically doomed: if 15 unmet needs exist and 3 ideas per need are generated, the search space is 3^15 ≈ 14M ideas; hit probability ≈ 0.
Needs-first (superior but structurally flawed as typically executed). Captures needs with focus groups, VOC, lead-user analysis, personas, ethnography — but these methods miss needs, mis-structure them, and rely on customers to translate unmet needs into product ideas (which they cannot).

Eight discoveries behind ODI (pp. 8–16)

1. The JOB is the unit of analysis, not the product (p. 9)

Vinyl, CD, and MP3 all help with the job of storing music. Improving the record does not help invent the CD — improving the job does. (Ulwick credits himself with this insight in the mid-1990s, pre-Christensen.)

2. Job Map structures all needs (p. 10) — directly BPM-relevant

"All functional jobs are processes and can be analyzed as such. Jobs, just like business processes, can be broken down into process steps."

Universal Job Map (8 steps, Fig. 1):

Step	Typical 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

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

3. Needs as customer-defined metrics (p. 11)

Desired-outcome statement structure:

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

E.g., "Minimise the time it takes for the corn seeds to germinate"; "Increase the percentage of plants that emerge at the same time." Strict syntax avoids inconsistency in importance/satisfaction ratings.

4. ODI applies to design innovation too (p. 12)

Hierarchy of customer needs (Fig. 3): Core Functional Job → (Other Functional Jobs directly/indirectly related · Emotional Jobs: personal · social) and 12 Consumption Chain Jobs (Purchase · Receive · Install · Set Up · Learn to Use · Interface · Transport · Store · Maintain · Upgrade · Replace · Dispose). Each consumption-chain job has its own job map.

5. The Opportunity Algorithm (pp. 13–14)

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

(First published HBR Jan 2002 "Turn Customer Input into Innovation".) Scale 1–10. Thresholds: >10 solid, >12 high, >15 extreme opportunity. Plotting importance × satisfaction yields the Opportunity Landscape with segments: Appropriately Served · Overserved (ripe for disruption) · Underserved (extreme opportunity).

6. Six growth strategies (p. 15)

Given known unmet needs, only six moves exist:

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

7. Sequenced, focused idea generation beats scattershot (p. 16)

8. Concepts evaluated against customer-defined metrics (p. 16)

Feature-by-feature satisfaction scoring replaces conjoint/forced-choice guesswork.

Benefits (p. 17)

Metric-based value measurement.
Unambiguous innovation language.
Alignment across R&D, marketing, branding, M&A.
Claimed 70–90% success potential vs industry norm.

Connections

Parallel / predecessor to Christensen's JTBD — Ulwick asserts priority (mid-1990s); see entities/tony-ulwick and entities/clayton-christensen.
Job Map = process map of the customer's work — the most direct BPM-JTBD bridge: all functional jobs are processes. See concepts/outcome-driven-innovation and cross-link to concepts/business-process.
Opportunity algorithm → operationalises importance×satisfaction gap; a general scoring template applicable to BPM process-pain prioritisation.
Consumption Chain Jobs — 12-step customer lifecycle; cf. BPM end-to-end process scope (sources/2014-sharp-using-scope-models TRAC).

concepts/outcome-driven-innovation · frameworks/jtbd · entities/tony-ulwick · entities/clayton-christensen · sources/2016-christensen-jobs-to-be-done · sources/2025-christensen-institute-jtbd-theory