Designing a successful Outcome Driven Innovation requires 6 steps:
- Step 1 – Define the job-to-be-done: Determine who the customer is and what they want to accomplish or the problem they want solved. This allows the organization to adopt a more scientifically-rigorous approach to determining customer needs and prevents distracting goals from taking precedent. Once the customer needs have been identified, consider the scope of the issue. The goal is to understand the entirety of the goal the customer wants to accomplish. To avoid defining the job too narrowly, consider how the products and services the organization offers fit into their needs. Conversely, to avoid defining it too broadly, consider if the company can address the entire issue or just a piece. After defining their needs, create the job map – a visual description of the task to be accomplished broken down into its sub-steps. Every link in the chain should be treated as its own step.
- Step 2 – Uncover the customer’s priorities: The end result of the first step is a statement that indicates a performance measure that is tied to the job-to-be-done. The statement will then dictate what a company must create in order to meet that metric.
- Step 3 – Quantify the degree to which each outcome is over/under fulfilled: A need is considered unfulfilled if it is critical to the customer’s success but is not met by current products and services on the market. In order to determine which needs are most critical, consider asking relevant stakeholders to rate the importance of each of the outcomes specified above. After determining which needs require more or less attention, consider the strengths and weaknesses of different methods for addressing the presented problems.
- Step 4 – Discover hidden segments of opportunity: In order to complete this step, it is critical to conduct market research with the goal of dividing the market into segments based on un-met needs. Understanding which segments of the market encounter which difficulties when addressing problems will aid the organization in creating a more efficient and profitable product strategy.
- Step 5 – Align existing products with market opportunities: This step involves determining what current organizational product and service offerings fit which segments of the market, then communicating the advantages of these products to the appropriate group.
- Step 6 – Brainstorm new products to meet remaining unfulfilled needs: This might involve giving more resources to the research and development team, partnering with or acquiring other organizations or adding new features to existing products and services.




