Disruption happens when customer needs evolve faster than businesses respond to them. While it might seem sudden, most market disruption builds over time – driven by shifts in consumer behavior, technology, and new market entrants who find better ways of solving existing problems.

Traditional companies often focus on improving their products incrementally, assuming that better performance or lower prices will keep customers loyal. But disruption often comes from addressing the job the customer is really trying to get done – not necessarily offering more features or faster delivery.

Understanding Disruption Through the JTBD Lens

The Jobs To Be Done framework approaches innovation by looking at the 'job' the customer is hiring a product or service to do. These jobs are not usually tied to specific products – they are outcomes customers want to achieve. For example:

• A drill isn’t bought for its specs – it’s hired to help someone hang a picture.
• Streaming services aren’t just for watching shows – they help users relax or unwind after work.

When companies lose sight of the job and focus too much on the product, they become vulnerable to alternatives – even simple or low-cost ones – that do the job better or more conveniently. That’s what causes disruption.

How JTBD Helps Anticipate Market Shifts

By deeply understanding customer jobs, businesses can notice changes in behavior that signal early shifts in demand or expectations. This insight lets you:

• Spot unmet needs before competitors do
• Pivot offerings to align with evolving customer goals
• Identify adjacent opportunities for innovation

Using JTBD for market research helps businesses move from reacting to disruption to proactively identifying ways to stay relevant. It puts the customer’s real goals at the center of your strategy, which is critical as business trends shift.

JTBD Offers Both Defense and Offense

Thinking in terms of jobs opens two important pathways:

Defensively, you prevent loss of market share by adapting current offerings to continue serving the core job, even as customer expectations shift. Offensively, you can create entirely new products or experiences inspired by the job itself – sometimes unlocking untapped markets.

Ultimately, the JTBD approach is a tool to anticipate disruption, not just react to it. When your team is consistently tuned into what customers are truly trying to accomplish, you're far more likely to see trends coming – and respond before competitors catch on.

Once you understand why disruption occurs, the next step is identifying your own customers’ core jobs – the consistent outcomes they’re trying to achieve when they “hire” your product or service. This knowledge is what allows you to defend your market position, even as challengers emerge or trends shift.

What Are Core Customer Jobs?

Customer jobs aren’t just tasks or product use cases. They’re deeper, goal-oriented needs. For example, someone buying a meal kit service isn’t just looking for food – they may be hiring the service to:

• Save time on dinner prep
• Feel like a good parent by serving nutritious meals
• Reduce stress after a long day

Understanding these emotional and functional jobs lets you see your business through a different lens – one that aligns more closely with how customers make decisions.

Why Knowing the Core Job Is So Important

When businesses focus too narrowly on product features or broad demographics, they often miss what drives real customer loyalty. That’s when disruption creeps in. A cheaper or seemingly “less robust” product can win customers if it better fulfills the actual job – even if it’s technically “inferior.”

By using JTBD market research for innovation, businesses gain clarity around:

• What customers value most in the experience
• Where frustrations exist in the current solutions
• Which competing options are starting to do the job better

With this insight, you can make meaningful improvements that resonate – not just updates that look good in a product specs sheet.

Examples of Defending Through Jobs Understanding

Let’s look at a couple of customer jobs to be done examples that show how this understanding helps defend your market position:

Example 1: Ride-sharing apps disrupted the taxi industry because they better fulfilled the job of "getting to a destination easily and reliably." Knowing this in advance could have helped traditional taxi services experiment with similar convenience-driven innovations.

Example 2: Subscription razor services didn’t just deliver razors – they helped customers easily maintain personal care routines without running errands. Traditional razor brands who understood this could have developed subscription or auto-replenishment options sooner to hold their ground.

In both cases, spotting the customer job gave companies an opportunity to adapt and defend before challengers took hold.

Using JTBD Research to Stay Close to the Job

Getting this insight doesn’t happen by accident. It comes from deep consumer insights – thoughtful conversations, observational research, and smart analysis. When paired with frameworks like JTBD, these techniques help clarify not only what customers do, but why they do it.

At SIVO Insights, we help businesses uncover these truths every day. Whether your goal is to protect a legacy product or identify where innovation can play a role, the path forward begins by understanding the job your customers are really hiring you to do.

In rapidly evolving markets, waiting for change to happen is no longer safe. Understanding the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework helps businesses stay proactive by identifying customer needs and pain points before competitors do. By recognizing the “jobs” customers are trying to accomplish – whether functional, social, or emotional – companies can uncover unmet needs that often signal new market opportunities.

Anticipate Change By Listening to What Customers Want to Achieve

Customers rarely think in terms of products or services. Instead, they hire solutions to get things done in their lives. When businesses reframe their market research through the lens of JTBD, they open up new ways to interpret these customer goals. For example, instead of simply tracking what features customers like, JTBD asks: “What job is this offering being hired for?”

Looking at customer behavior this way allows you to:

• Spot trends in how people accomplish specific tasks
• Understand where current solutions fall short
• Uncover adjacent or overlooked needs
• Identify whitespace for innovation

For instance, a company providing home fitness equipment might discover that customers aren't just trying to “work out at home” – they’re trying to build confidence, save time, or reconnect with wellness after a stressful day. That opens more doors for innovation than simply adding new machine features.

How This Creates Strategic Advantage

Using market research to uncover job-based insights puts organizations ahead of competitors reacting only to surface trends. It also helps reduce risk during the innovation process, by focusing development around customer needs with proven demand. This aligns new solutions with what people actually want to achieve – not just what companies think they want.

Ultimately, spotting unmet jobs gives businesses a head start in exploring new product ideas, repositioning current offerings, or entering untapped markets while others are still catching up.

Once you've uncovered customer jobs, how you apply them strategically becomes key. One of the key strengths of the Jobs To Be Done framework is its flexibility – it can support both offensive innovation and defensive market protection. Knowing the difference helps you direct your efforts effectively, whether you're chasing growth or shielding market share from disruption.

Defensive JTBD: Protecting Your Ground

Defensive strategies using JTBD are all about strengthening your hold on current customers. This means digging deep into the reasons they choose your brand today – and ensuring you keep delivering on those expectations, even as the market shifts.

For example, if long-time customers use your service to feel peace of mind or save time, a defensive move might focus on refining those aspects: simplifying onboarding, enhancing support, or amplifying emotional trust. This allows companies to protect their core market and reduce vulnerability to competitors or startups offering trendier features.

Offensive JTBD: Expanding Into New Territory

Offensive strategies focus on identifying customer jobs that no one is solving well – or innovating ahead of existing solutions. It’s about staying one step ahead by continually looking for evolving goals, frustrations, and workarounds that signal unmet needs.

For instance, a food brand noticing rising interest in “quick meals that feel indulgent” could develop faster-prep gourmet kits, combining convenience with quality. That’s an offensive JTBD move – meeting an emerging need before others latch on.

When to Use Each Approach

Many companies benefit from using both strategies at the same time:

• Use defensive JTBD when customer retention, brand loyalty, or competitive threats are top concerns.
• Use offensive JTBD when seeking growth, testing new offerings, or expanding into new audiences or geographies.

Balancing both allows businesses to solidify their core while still exploring future-focused ideas. It’s a modern take on competitive strategy through the lens of real customer intent.

Understanding customer jobs is only half the story. To stay ahead of market disruption and drive meaningful business innovation, teams must take the insights gathered through JTBD research and translate them into action. Fortunately, the JTBD framework lends itself well to cross-functional collaboration – marketing, innovation, R&D, and strategy teams can all rally around a shared understanding of what customers truly want to achieve.

Start with Clear, Defined Jobs

Clarity is key. Well-articulated customer jobs should focus on the desired outcome, not the product category. For example, instead of saying, “Get a better app,” a clearer job might be, “Quickly find trustworthy answers to parenting questions.” This language helps teams think more creatively about potential solutions across departments.

Include JTBD Findings in Brainstorming and Planning

Rather than treat market research as a separate deliverable, integrate JTBD insights directly into your decision-making processes. For product development, this might mean mapping features to emotional or functional outcomes. For branding, it could mean shaping messaging around the job your customers “hire” you to fulfill.

Tips to Make JTBD Actionable in Your Organization

• Use job stories, not personas: Phrase findings as "When I... I want to... so I can..." statements to keep outcomes clear and user-centered.
• Create a jobs library: Build a searchable database of key customer jobs your team can reference and update.
• Prioritize jobs by urgency and current satisfaction: Focus on jobs that are important to customers but poorly addressed today.
• Assign ownership by function: Identify which team or department is best equipped to address specific jobs, from product teams to service design.

When properly implemented, JTBD insights foster alignment and focus by rooting innovation, marketing, and business strategy in concrete customer outcomes – making it a reliable way to anticipate and respond to disruption with clarity.