Jobs to Be Done is customers hire products to do a job in their life. It sits in the Cognition dimension (COG) of the Human Behavior Taxonomy™ as element HBT-COG-0415, within the Markets family. The core principle: customers hire products to do a job in their life. In incentive terms, it matters because it changes the payoff people perceive before they choose — which means it can be designed for, or exploited.
Scientific Definition
Customers hire products to do a job in their life.
Plain-English Definition
Customers hire products to do a job in their life.
Feynman Explanation
Nobody bought the drill. They bought the hole.
Core Principle
Customers hire products to do a job in their life.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
Customers hire products to do a job in their life.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Product strategy and innovation.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
Nobody bought the drill. They bought the hole.
Examples
- Milkshakes hired for the morning commute.
- Product strategy and innovation.
Pending editorial review.
Original analysis from The Incentives Lab — how this element behaves inside real payoff structures.
Why this element matters to incentive design
When this element shows up in a diagnostic, the instinct is to train people out of it. Training rarely moves it. The mechanism underneath it is straightforward: customers hire products to do a job in their life. You can recognize it in the field by its signature: nobody bought the drill. They bought the hole. Every element in the Cognition dimension changes the perceived payoff of an action before the action happens, which is exactly where incentive design has leverage.
How it gets exploited
Left undesigned, product strategy and innovation. It is amplified whenever product strategy and innovation. Inside organizations that shows up as product strategy and innovation. The pattern is the same one Goodhart's Law describes: the measurable proxy attracts the effort, and the purpose behind it quietly loses funding.
How the Lab designs around it
The redesign move is to interview for jobs, not for features. Measure the behavior, not the sentiment. A survey will tell you how people feel about this; only observed action tells you whether it changed.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Interview for jobs, not for features.
Measurement Approaches
Pending editorial review.
Evidence
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
- Interview for jobs, not for features.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Interactive Mini Network
Click any neighbor to re-center the graph and follow the threads of connection.
Knowledge Graph Neighbors
Auto-linked to the rest of the Human Behavior Taxonomy by family, domain, dimension, and shared keywords.
The rate at which customers (or employees) leave over a period.
The gap between early adopters and the early majority kills most products.
Innovators → early adopters → early majority → late majority → laggards.
Low-end or new-market entrants overtake established incumbents.
Prices driven far above intrinsic value by feedback loops of belief and behavior.
Asset prices fully reflect available information; you can't reliably beat the market.
Doing everything right by current customers can kill you.
Aggregating many niche markets equals or exceeds the mainstream.
Beliefs about reality shape the reality.
Technologies grow slowly, then explode, then plateau.
How will I feel about this in 10 minutes / 10 months / 10 years?
Basics first (health/finances), then depth (mastery/impact), then altruism (widening circle).
Where Jobs to Be Done is cited in the corpus
Essays, field guides, and diagnostics from The Incentives Lab that apply this element.
- EssayGoodhart's Law in the Real World
How measurable proxies capture judgment.
- EssayThe Perverse Incentives Hiding in Your KPIs
Cognitive shortcuts turned into scorecards.
- EssayAI Agents Inherit Your Incentives
How this element propagates into automated systems.
- CourseIncentives 101
The free ten-part primer on reading a payoff structure.
- ReferenceThe incentive glossary
Definitions for every mental model, bias, and fallacy in the corpus.
- ReferenceThe Periodic Table of Human Behavior
The full 1,267-element map this page belongs to.
Questions about Jobs to Be Done
- What is Jobs to Be Done?
- Jobs to Be Done is customers hire products to do a job in their life. It sits in the Cognition dimension (COG) of the Human Behavior Taxonomy™ as element HBT-COG-0415, within the Markets family. The core principle: customers hire products to do a job in their life. In incentive terms, it matters because it changes the payoff people perceive before they choose — which means it can be designed for, or exploited.
- What is an example of Jobs to Be Done?
- Product strategy and innovation. The Incentives Lab catalogs everyday, organizational, and historical instances of this element on its Human Behavior Taxonomy™ page (HBT-COG-0415).
- How is Jobs to Be Done exploited?
- Product strategy and innovation.
- How do you design around Jobs to Be Done?
- Interview for jobs, not for features.
- Which behavioral dimension does Jobs to Be Done belong to?
- Jobs to Be Done is classified in the Cognition dimension (COG) of the Human Behavior Taxonomy™, family "Markets", class "Mental Model". Its permanent identifier is HBT-COG-0415 and its evidence grade is B.