---
title: "What is Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI)?"
type: source
tags: [jtbd, odi, innovation, customer-needs, opportunity-algorithm, ulwick, strategyn]
authors: [Ulwick, Anthony W.]
year: 2009
venue: "Strategyn whitepaper"
kind: report
raw_path: "raw/Task Analysis & JTBD/Strategyn_what_is_Outcome_Driven_Innovation.pdf"
sources: []
key_claims:
  - "Innovation is a business process — not an initiative — that begins with market selection and ends at concept approval; only then does product development begin."
  - "Ideas-first approaches (including 'fail fast' brainstorming) are inherently flawed — generating more ideas without knowing unmet needs has near-zero probability of success."
  - "The unit of analysis for innovation is the JOB, not the product."
  - "All functional jobs are processes and can be decomposed into a universal eight-step job map: Define → Locate → Prepare → Confirm → Execute → Monitor → Modify → Conclude."
  - "A job typically has 8–12 process steps, 6–12 needs per step, and 50–150 desired-outcome statements overall."
  - "Desired outcomes are customer-defined METRICS — phrased as [Direction of improvement] [Unit of measure] [Object of control] [Contextual clarifier] [Example of object control]."
  - "The Opportunity Algorithm ranks unmet needs: Opportunity = Importance + max(Importance − Satisfaction, 0). Opportunity >10 = solid; >12 = high; >15 = extreme."
  - "There are only six growth strategies once unmet needs are known (add features to existing platform for core job; for related jobs; new platform for core job; new platform for core+related; new platform for new executor; new platform for new executor on core+related)."
  - "ODI claims an 86% success rate vs the 70–90% failure rate of conventional innovation processes."
created: 2026-04-20
updated: 2026-04-20
---

# 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:

1. **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.
2. **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:
1. Add features to existing platform → better core job
2. Add features to existing platform → related jobs
3. New platform → core job better/cheaper
4. New platform → core + related jobs
5. New platform → new job executor for core
6. 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).

## Related

[[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]]