Resources

Worth your time on this question

Everything worth your time on the question: Does anybody actually want this?

Five things on this subject: two TAIU exercises and three things to read. It opens with Know Your Customers' Jobs to Be Done by Clayton Christensen and colleagues. The argument that people hire a product to make progress in a particular circumstance.

This page is for going further on your own. If you would rather work the question out with somebody asking, that is the conversation.

Is this idea real: talk it through

TRY · 14 MIN

Business Reality Check

TAIU

The arithmetic that has to hold.

Revenue, cost, price and the arithmetic that has to hold.

Try it →

Was this useful?

TRY · 12 MIN

Failure Before Failure

TAIU

It is a year from now and this failed. Write the reason before you start.

A pre mortem written before the consequential decision is made.

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READ · ARTICLE

Know Your Customers' Jobs to Be Done

Clayton Christensen and colleagues

The argument that people hire a product to make progress in a particular circumstance. It moves the question from what the thing is to what it is competing against, which is usually doing nothing.

The Four Steps to the Epiphany

Steve Blank

The origin of the argument that facts about customers live outside the building. Useful precisely because it is unglamorous about how much of early belief turns out to be wrong.

The Mom Test

Rob Fitzpatrick

A short, practical book about asking questions that cannot be answered with encouragement. If people keep telling you your idea is great, read it before you build anything.

Recommended by the TAIU community

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