Jobs to be Done (JTBD) is a robust customer-centric framework originally popularized by Clayton Christensen, a Harvard Business School professor, and later further developed by Anthony Ulwick. It posits that customers hire products or services to perform certain jobs in their lives. By understanding these jobs and the specific outcomes customers are trying to achieve, companies can innovate and design solutions that directly meet those needs.

Clayton Christensen's perspective on JTBD emphasizes the circumstances or situations that drive customers to adopt new products. According to him, understanding the context or the "job" that customers need to get done is key to driving innovation. For instance, a person "hires" a milkshake in the morning not because of its taste, but to keep themselves full during a long commute. In this view, the job is defined broadly, beyond functional tasks, to include social and emotional dimensions as well.

Anthony Ulwick's approach, on the other hand, introduces a methodology called Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI). The ODI process begins by defining all the jobs a customer is trying to get done and then identifying the desired outcomes or metrics that customers use to measure success when executing these jobs. This approach is more structured and focuses on quantifying the unmet needs, making it possible for companies to prioritize where to focus their innovation efforts based on opportunities for the greatest impact.

Ulwick's ODI process includes defining the job map, which is a step-by-step representation of the customer's job, and categorizing over 100 potential customer desired outcomes. The outcomes are then ranked by importance and satisfaction, resulting in an 'opportunity score'. High-scoring outcomes represent areas of opportunity where customer needs are unmet, guiding companies where to focus their innovation.

In both approaches, the core premise is that by understanding the "jobs" that customers are trying to accomplish and the outcomes they desire, companies can create superior products and services that fulfill these needs more effectively than the competition. This not only provides a valuable framework for product development and innovation but also for the formulation of marketing, sales, and overall business strategy.