via: Free Clay Christensen, MIT Sloan Management Review, Article - Finding the Right Job for Your Product by Clayton M. Christensen, Scott D. Anthony, Gerald Berstell and Denise Nitterhouse (available online for a limited time only). The article has a very simple point. Customers buy your product or service to fill some specific need or desire. Knowing what need the customer is filling can help you improve your offering. Knowing what job the customer is using your product for lets you focus on improving your product for that market. The article provides several examples.

The basic idea is familiar: customer focus, specifically see how your customers uses your product (there might well be several market segments that use your products in different ways - to do different jobs in the words of the article).

Related: articles by Clayton Christensen - Customer Un-focus - What Could we do Better? - Genchi Genbutsu is the lean term for the concept going to see with your own eyes: go and see the customer actually use the product, don’t just listen to what they say - Quality Conversation with Gary Convis - management improvement articles