Jobs to Be Done
Customers hire products to do a job in their life.
"Nobody bought the drill. They bought the hole."
What is Jobs to Be Done? Customers hire products to do a job in their life. Product strategy and innovation.
Milkshakes hired for the morning commute.
Product strategy and innovation.
Interview for jobs, not for features.
Use the model. Pick the move.
Customers hire products to do a job in their life. You've just seen this: Milkshakes hired for the morning commute. Which lever does the model recommend?
Pick a lever. There are no neutral ones — every incentive funds a behavior somewhere.
Pick a reaction to Jobs to Be Done
One tap. We'll point you at the most useful next surface based on how this hits.
The full taxonomy entry
Every concept in the Atlas uses the same structure — so Jobs to Be Done can be compared, recombined, and cited like an element on a periodic table.
- Business
- Leadership
- Government
- Healthcare
- Education
- Sales
- Marketing
- AI
- Negotiation
- Media
- Public Policy
- Relationships
- Where in our org would Jobs to Be Done most often show up unnoticed?
- Which metric, ritual, or contract clause quietly rewards Jobs to Be Done?
- If we removed every payoff for Jobs to Be Done, what behavior would replace it?
- Who benefits when Jobs to Be Done persists — and who pays the cost?
- People defend the status quo using the language of jobs to be done.
- Decisions cluster around the easiest narrative rather than the strongest evidence.
- New data changes the slide deck but not the decision.
- Anyone naming the pattern is treated as the problem.
Every Atlas entry is a node in a knowledge graph. See the related rail below to follow the connections.
See Jobs to Be Done through 2 lenses
Each layer of the Incentives OS reframes this concept with its own thinkers, vocabulary, and diagnostic question.
Do you actually know Jobs to Be Done?
Three quick questions. Result is saved into your review streak — come back when the term is due to lock it in.
Which best describes Jobs to Be Done?
Worked example, counter-example & concept map
On-demand AI analysis grounded in the Lab's research. Cached on your device after first run.
Your nervous system has a region for this.
When you encounter Jobs to Be Done, your striatum has built a reward association — and the next time the cue appears, it will push you toward the behavior whether you decide to or not.
Reward learning, habit formation, anticipation, craving, action selection. Habits live here. So do addictions. Variable rewards train this circuit faster than fixed ones.
See Striatum in the Brain Atlas →Picked for you, from the Atlas
Ranked by shared learning paths, overlapping chips, and what you've saved.
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.
Send the card, not just the link
A pre-rendered social card with the title, eyebrow, and URL. Copy the link, post it anywhere, or download the SVG for slides.
More definitions to follow
Every term in the Atlas connects to a dozen others. Pick any of these and see where it takes you.
We defer to perceived expertise, rank, or uniform.
Inputs combine under conditions to produce new outputs — sometimes irreversibly.
Stress hormone with cognitive and immune-system consequences.
Self-control draws from a limited daily pool. (Contested in lab; observed in life.)
Federal policy forces homeowners to rebuild doomed structures while waiting on mitigation buyouts.
Systems paid per filled bed have weak incentives to invest in prevention or community health.
Players reason a fixed number of steps ahead about what others will do — and rarely beyond level 2 or 3.
Prefer the simplest explanation consistent with the evidence.
Titles substitute for raises; senior titles inflate, value doesn't.
Reflexively rejecting evidence that contradicts established norms.
Lifetime appointments protect academic freedom but can dampen experimentation in teaching.
Earn-outs designed to retain founders often demotivate the team they bought.