Innovation Unpacked | Mike Boysen

Is your sales team saying one thing while support says another? Does marketing send emails that seem completely disconnected from a customer's actual product usage or recent service interactions? If this sounds familiar, you're not alone. Many businesses, from agile SMBs to large enterprises, struggle with a fundamental question: who truly owns customer communication? The traditional answer—or lac...

Table of Contents * Introduction: The Unseen Risk in Your Insurance Policy * Elevating the Abstraction: From Complex Policies to Simple Outcomes * Pillar 1: Proactive Insurance - Preventing the Claim in the First Place * Creativity Trigger Reference Table: Proactive Insurance * Pillar 2: Parametric Insurance - Automated Payouts for Predetermined Events * Creativity Trigger Reference Table: Paramet...

The Practical Innovator's Guide to Customer-Centric Growth is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Introduction: The Allure of the "Wow" Factor and the Hidden Risk Every so often, a design announcement sends ripples through the tech world. You see it in the breathless media coverage and the buzz on social platforms....

Table of Contents * Introduction: The Unwinnable Arms Race * The Flaw in Our Fortress Mentality * A New Foundation - From Defense to Resilience * Elevating the Level of Abstraction * Concept Working Today (That Few Are Doing Right): True Zero Trust * Novel Concept for the Future: "Systemic Obfuscation" * What This Means for Your Business Strategy * Creativity Triggers for Novel Cybersecurity Conce...

Table of Contents * Introduction: The Flaw of Averages in Innovation Funding * Part 1: Deconstructing the Two Methodologies * A Quick Refresher on Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) * Introducing Real Options Analysis (ROA): Your Strategic Toolkit for Uncertainty * Part 2: The Novel Strategy: Mapping Real Options to the JTBD Journey * Phase 1: Purchasing the "Option to Explore" * Phase 2: Purchasing the "Opti...

We’ve all heard the grim statistics: the vast majority of new products fail. Companies pour billions into innovation, yet the results often feel frustratingly unpredictable, more like rolling the dice than executing a sound business strategy. Project post-mortems might blame execution, market timing, or lack of features, but often, the real culprit lies deeper – a fundamentally flawed approach to...

I decided to answer some of the questions I keep getting asked about using simulations and throwing out JTBD surveys. While there's a lot more to the story, this should help you get a better understanding. Markets are dynamic and complex, and a point-in-time survey is something that teams that are in the design-build-GTM mix struggle with as these market forces jumble all of their planning. YES …...

Welcome to the future of Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) quantitative analysis! 🚀 In this video, we introduce a groundbreaking approach that replaces traditional survey-based models with dynamic, simulation-driven insights powered by agentic models and system dynamics. Discover how AI can simulate every possible combination of situational factors and contexts to create rich, predictive personas—giving you...

Thanks for reading Practical Innovation w/ Jobs-to-be-Done! This post is public so feel free to share it. Why did predictive personalization—once hailed as the future of customer experiences—fail to live up to its promise? In this video, we explore how the over-reliance on data and algorithms missed the mark on delivering the outcomes customers truly wanted. Check out my JTBD Masterclass: https://...

SUMMARY Tesla’s Jobs-to-Be-Done Masterclass: Innovating Around the Core Job Tesla is a name synonymous with innovation. Yet, the brilliance of Tesla doesn’t come from inventing cars—they’ve existed for over a century. What sets Tesla apart is its ability to redefine what we expect from personal mobility by focusing on jobs adjacent to the core task of transportation. When viewed through the lens o...

I’m a customer-centric innovator with a long background in customer-facing technology and trained in innovation by the masters of Outcome-Driven Innovation - the only framing that is actionable for innovators, product planners, designers, and marketers. Follow my blog at https://jobstobedone.substack.com or find ways to contact me below Mike Boysen - www.pjtbd.com Why fail fast when you can succee...

I've used large language models to bring a great deal of precision and consistency to the qualitative phase of #JTBD research. While a slightly different 𝗷𝗼𝗯 𝗺𝗮𝗽, or 𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗰-𝘀𝗲𝘁 will be produced when running the same inputs multiple times, they are basically consistent in scope. Just slight variations in language. Humans, on the other hand, introduce a great deal of variability via bias, and are he...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.jtbd.one Before I dive into this potentially divisive topic , I wanted to share this new toolkit I’ve created that I hope will help you understand the key principles of Jobs-to-be-Done faster and easier. It has 99 topics supporting 9 key principles. It’s completely free and I am expanding each of the topics regularly. It’s called th...

The marketing technology landscape is vast and continues to expand each year, leaving marketers overwhelmed by choice and unsure of where to focus their efforts. Rather than seeking out ever more specialized solutions, the industry is on the cusp of the significant evolution that I’ve been predicting, one driven by a focus on outcomes and powered by the transformative capabilities of artificial in...

This is a review of my original article: https://open.substack.com/pub/jobstobedone/p/one-way-to-think-of-experience-and?r=4wccx&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.jtbd.one/subscribe

This podcast summarizes my second article in the Martech series I wrote in 2020 and talk about how to define markets better for innovation. Here’s the original article This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.jtbd.one/subscribe

PAUL GREENBERG was nice enough to host me on his ZDNet blog several years back so I could give my contrarian view to the CRM and Martech world about innovation. I don’t do it like they do. Here’s a link to the original article so you can look at some of the visuals, but this podcast will give you the foundation. They probably explain it better than I did. The CRM industry: A new science for custom...

Over 4 years ago I wrote a piece, sort of tongue-in-cheek about a variation on Gartner’s Magic Quadrant. I was trying to make a point, and it’s quite possible that Google has helped me make it a bit clear. Enjoy! Link original article: https://open.substack.com/pub/jobstobedone/p/the-subjective-quadrant-for-digital?r=4wccx&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web This is a public episode. If you'd like to...

This podcast takes a look at one of my recent posts/videos and walks through it in entirely different way. I hope you find this valuable. It’s teaching me more about story-telling. https://open.substack.com/pub/jobstobedone/p/if-people-cobble-solutions-together?r=4wccx&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to b...

This podcast is a review of an article I wrote over 4 years ago. It’s the first in a series I did on innovation in Martech. While you may not be in the Martech industry, this viewpoint applies equally as well to any industry. It’s industry agnostic and market focused. I hope you enjoy it. Here’s a link to the original article This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subsc...

Original Post: Market Approach PMF View: Emphasizes identifying l arge existing markets with current needs . JTBD Counter-argument #1 Defines markets by jobs-to-be-done, not existing product categories. JTBD fundamentally redefines how we conceptualize markets. Instead of segmenting markets based on product categories or demographic characteristics, JTBD focuses on the underlying job that customer...

Framing the Discussion What I’m going to suggest below will be anathema to the hoards of Venture Capitalists out there - young and old. I am certainly an iconoclast on this topic, if not a heretic. I also have a strange sense of humor. So be it! However, what I’m going to suggest is something that I believe should be embraced by an industry that is known for it’s abysmal track record at predicting...

Let me know what you think of this format. So much easier to produce frequently to get thoughts out of my head, that you might find interesting. Practical Innovation w/ Jobs-to-be-Done is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. If you'd like to learn more... * I do offer end-to-end consulting if you’re just not ready to...

My name is Mike, and my goal is to help all of you achieve your innovation research outcomes faster, less expensively, with less bias, and fewer assumptions. The obvious next step is giving you a way to sort through strategic options so you can accelerate into experiments quickly, cheaply, easily and productively. This blog documents many of the thought exercises I go through as I continually stri...

As I think about all of the Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI) surveys I’ve seen, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen the solution captured specifically for each step in the map. Generally there is a question about which products are used in a “Select all that Apply” format. This is a Job-level capture, so it doesn’t address the fact that a single job performer might use different tools at each step (not...