Competing Against Luck

Why do some innovations succeed while others fail, even when backed by the smartest minds and the biggest budgets? In Competing Against Luck, Clayton Christensen argues that the common misconception is that innovation is a game of chance — that success depends on luck, timing, or sheer creativity. He contends that it’s actually possible to make innovation predictable by understanding one thing: what causes customers to make the choices they make. This book’s central premise revolves around the Theory of Jobs to Be Done, a framework that explains why people “hire” products and services to accomplish goals or solve problems in their lives.

As Christensen explains, we often think innovation means adding features, using more data, or copying competitors. Yet most companies end up “getting better and better at the wrong things.” Innovation fails not because it cannot be managed, but because most organizations don’t know what job they’re actually solving for their customers. When businesses shift their focus from perfecting products to understanding the jobs customers need done, they create solutions that truly resonate, allowing them to compete not on luck but on causality — the hidden reasons behind consumer choice.

The Struggle for Progress

According to Christensen, every person is struggling to make progress in some aspect of life — to get something done that matters to them at a particular moment. These struggles can be small (keeping entertained during a commute) or large (finding a fulfilling career or building family connections). The reason innovation feels random is because most companies focus on correlation (categories, demographics, trends) rather than causation (why customers hire solutions). Without understanding progress, businesses spend billions chasing patterns in data that don’t actually predict success.

Jobs Theory: Shifting the Lens

The Jobs to Be Done theory reframes innovation entirely: customers “hire” products for specific jobs that arise in their lives. When a product successfully performs the job, they hire it again; if it fails, they “fire” it and look for something better. A milkshake isn’t just breakfast — it might be hired to make a boring commute enjoyable. Airbnb isn’t merely hotel competition — it helps travelers participate in genuine local experiences. These examples show that understanding the circumstances behind decisions (the time, place, emotions, and social context) matters far more than age, income, or product features.

Why This Theory Matters

Christensen’s argument echoes the insights of Louis Pasteur’s germ theory in medicine or W. Edwards Deming’s quality revolution in manufacturing — once causation is understood, uncertainty fades and progress becomes systematic. Instead of hoping innovations will catch on, managers can build processes around customer jobs to make success replicable. This approach empowers organizations to stop being “lost while making good time” — as Yogi Berra’s famous quote suggests — and start predicting what will actually drive growth.

From Random Hits to Reliable Growth

The book is organized in three parts: first, explaining Jobs Theory as the causal mechanism behind successful innovation; second, showing the difficult but rewarding work of applying it in practice; and third, describing how to turn entire organizations into jobs-focused entities. Through vivid examples—from SNHU’s transformation of higher education to BMW and Uber’s reinvention of mobility—Christensen demonstrates that companies can stop “competing on luck” by systematically uncovering customers’ struggles. The ultimate takeaway: innovation isn’t magic. It’s about learning to ask the right question — not “How do we build a better product?” but “What job is our customer really hiring us to do?”

Christensen introduces the Jobs Theory through an unexpected example: milkshakes. A fast-food chain, desperate to boost sales, spent months adjusting flavors, pricing, and thickness — all to no avail. It wasn’t until they asked a new question, “What job are people hiring the milkshake to do?” that the answer emerged. By observing daily routines, researchers found commuters were buying milkshakes early in the morning not just for breakfast, but as a companion for long, dull drives — something filling, mess-free, and entertaining.

Two Different Jobs, Two Different Solutions

Morning commuters hired the milkshake for a completely different job than fathers buying them in the afternoon for their children. For commuters, thicker shakes lasted longer through the drive and warded off midmorning hunger. For fathers, smaller, quicker-to-finish shakes allowed them to feel like good parents without guilt. The same product solved two distinct jobs depending on circumstance. Averaging customer feedback would have produced a one-size-fits-none design. By focusing on why customers hired milkshakes, the chain could tailor solutions for each job instead of tinkering with surface-level features.

Beyond Products: Margarine and Market Missteps

Christensen extends this thinking to Unilever’s struggle with margarine. The company assumed it was competing with butter. But when viewed through Jobs Theory, margarine was competing with vastly different products — olive oil for cooking, Teflon spray for nonstick needs, or mayonnaise for spreading. Each was hired for a unique job. Margarine’s stagnation wasn’t from lack of innovation, but from misunderstanding what jobs it served. By focusing on product attributes (fat content, flavor) instead of consumer progress (ease of spreading, guilt-free health perception), Unilever missed potential growth paths.

“Every process is perfectly designed to deliver the results it gets.” Christensen warns that organizations structured around wrong questions will keep churning out mediocrity — data-rich models that describe rather than predict consumer behavior.

From Correlation to Causation

This chapter crystallizes a leadership mindset shift: managers should stop asking about customer demographics and start exploring customer circumstances. Six-foot-tall, middle-aged commuters don’t buy because of who they are; they buy because they’re struggling to make a boring commute meaningful. The milkshake dilemma teaches that real customer insight comes not from more data but better questions. As W. Edwards Deming famously said, “If you do not know how to ask the right question, you discover nothing.”

Christensen argues that innovation today is stuck in a “pre-quality” era much like car manufacturing was before Deming’s revolution. Companies build processes around correlation — measuring descriptive data without asking what causes success. Just as Toyota transformed manufacturing by identifying root causes of defects, innovators must identify the root causes of consumer choices. In short: stop chasing trends, start uncovering causal mechanisms.

Defining the Job Clearly

Jobs are defined as the progress a person is trying to make in a particular circumstance. Christensen breaks this down into three essential dimensions: functional (what practical outcome they seek), social (how they want to be perceived by others), and emotional (how they want to feel). For instance, buying childcare isn’t just functional — it’s deeply emotional. Parents hire it not only to keep kids safe but to feel trusted and guilt-free. Recognizing these intertwined dimensions turns vague “needs” into actionable insight.

Circumstances, Not Categories

Managers often organize markets around demographics, product attributes, or competitive response. But a circumstance — who, when, where, and while doing what — offers far richer insight. A teenager’s need to communicate privately is timeless, whether through secret notes or Snapchat messages. The underlying job (“connect with friends away from parental oversight”) remains stable even as technology evolves. Understanding jobs reveals competition from unexpected directions. Netflix, as its CEO Reed Hastings noted, doesn’t compete with Amazon or cable TV. It competes with everything you do to relax — video games, wine, or conversation.

Seeing Beyond “Epicycles”

Borrowing from history, Christensen compares current innovation “science” to Aristotle’s theory of planets revolving around Earth — an elaborate but flawed belief refined with endless fixes (“epicycles”). Jobs Theory is a Copernican revolution for business: instead of putting the product at the center, it places the customer’s job at the center of the innovation universe. Once you identify the right job, all decisions — design, marketing, metrics — align around causality, not correlation.

To prove Jobs Theory’s power, Christensen showcases organizations across industries that discovered unarticulated jobs and created breakthrough growth. From higher education to software, these examples reveal that innovation doesn’t demand luck but clarity about what customers are struggling to achieve.

Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU): Competing with “Nothing”

Paul LeBlanc’s SNHU transformed from a struggling regional college into a thriving online powerhouse by identifying two distinct jobs. Traditional on-campus students hired SNHU for a coming-of-age experience. Adult learners hired it to get credentials quickly and flexibly to improve their families’ lives. By treating online students’ job as distinct — and removing obstacles like slow financial-aid communication and transcript hassles — SNHU competed not with other universities but with nonconsumption (adults doing nothing because traditional options didn’t fit their lives). Result: explosive growth and national recognition for innovation.

Intuit: Making Accounting Invisible

Scott Cook applied Jobs Theory to small-business owners using Quicken. These entrepreneurs didn’t want “accounting software”; they wanted confidence that financial flows were running smoothly. Intuit’s QuickBooks simplified bookkeeping to help owners feel in control of cash flow — offering half the features at twice the price, yet dominating the market. Customers hired confidence, not complexity.

FranklinCovey: From Teaching Skills to Delivering Outcomes

B2B training giant FranklinCovey realized clients weren’t hiring courses but transformation: they wanted their staff to execute strategy effectively. By redesigning offerings around the job “help me get my people to achieve measurable goals,” FranklinCovey moved from selling content to delivering measurable processes — integrating coaches, assessments, and results tracking. Revenue soared as they competed in a category with few true rivals.

The Lesson

Whether SNHU is helping adults finish school or Intuit is helping owners regain confidence, success comes from seeing with “new eyes.” Jobs Theory changes who the real competition is — often not other companies but people’s inertia or anxiety. Innovators must shift from product thinking to progress thinking to uncover markets hiding in plain sight.

In chapter 4, “Job Hunting,” Christensen turns from theory to practice. He likens spotting innovation opportunities to being a detective: insights hide not in data sets but in everyday struggles. To uncover Jobs to Be Done, you must observe how customers cobble together imperfect solutions, avoid certain tasks, or creatively misuse existing products.

Five Places to Look for Jobs

• 1. Your own life: Innovation often starts with personal frustration. Sal Khan built Khan Academy videos not as polished products but as fun, accessible lessons for his cousin struggling with math — solving a job millions shared.
• 2. Nonconsumption: Opportunities arise where people choose nothing over poor options. Kimberly-Clark’s Depend Silhouette briefs let embarrassed consumers reclaim their lives with dignity — competing not with other brands but with avoidance.
• 3. Workarounds: Watch for improvised fixes. A father’s homemade “Bank of Daddy” revealed a job banks ignored — helping kids learn saving. ING Direct built digital savings accounts around that simple progress.
• 4. Things people don’t want to do: MinuteClinic thrived by solving the negative job “I don’t want to go to the doctor.” Quick, convenient strep tests met busy parents’ needs better than traditional care.
• 5. Unusual product uses: Arm & Hammer found growth when it realized customers hired baking soda to freshen air, clean carpets, and whiten teeth — not just bake cakes.

Seeing the Emotional Score

Each job carries emotional weight. At Intermountain Healthcare, innovation director Todd Dunn discovered that even the crinkly paper on exam tables made patients feel anxious. Redesigning experiences around emotional comfort transformed care delivery. Similarly, P&G’s diaper innovation in China succeeded not because of low price but because it solved a job parents deeply felt — helping babies sleep better so parents could be closer and more rested.

The Method to the Madness

These examples prove that opportunity hides in struggles. Like scientific “fracking for jobs,” innovators must drill deep into context—asking “what obstacles prevent progress?” and observing compensating behaviors. Innovation becomes an act of empathy: seeing people as heroes seeking progress and designing solutions that help them succeed.

Most companies rely on surveys and data to understand customers, but Christensen argues that these methods capture only what customers say — not what actually drives their decisions. Chapter 5 teaches you to listen between the lines: watch what customers hire, fire, and struggle with, then map the competing forces influencing their choices.

The Two Hires

Every purchase has a Big Hire (the moment someone buys) and a Little Hire (the moment they actually use the product). Downloading an app isn’t hiring it until you use it repeatedly; buying a dress isn’t hiring it until you wear it. Real success comes when Little Hires follow Big Hires consistently. Understanding both reveals how to prevent customers from firing your product later.

The Forces of Progress

Christensen outlines four forces shaping each decision:The push of the situation (the problem to solve),the pull of the new solution (its appeal),habits of the present (comfort with current ways), andanxiety of the new (fear of worse outcomes). This framework explains why even superior products fail if anxiety outweighs pull. For example, ING Direct opened in-person cafés to ease fear of digital banking; SNHU’s physical campus reassured online learners it wasn’t a sketchy online diploma mill.

Storyboarding Customer Life

To uncover jobs, companies should build “documentaries” of customer struggles. Airbnb’s founders visualized 45 emotional moments for hosts and guests—from arrival greetings to candlelight ambience—ensuring every experience solved their jobs perfectly. Similarly, Bob Moesta’s mattress interview reveals a rich narrative: a man’s year-long frustration with back pain and anxiety turned into an impulsive purchase at Costco. He wasn’t buying comfort; he was buying relief from stress and guilt about family and productivity. His story shows customers fire old solutions emotionally before hiring new ones rationally.

The Detective’s Mindset

True innovators act like detectives, piecing together stories instead of statistics. When Mercer redesigned its pension services, listening for clients’ fears — public embarrassment, risk, or career panic — led to an online exchange that automated those anxieties away. Successful innovations don’t sell features; they sell progress, reassurance, or peace of mind.

Once you understand a job, Christensen shows how to design the experiences and processes that ensure your product nails it every time. He uses American Girl, IKEA, Medtronic, Uber, and Amazon as vivid case studies of creating experiences so integrated around a job that competitors cannot easily copy them.

Experiences as the Real Product

Pleasant Rowland’s American Girl dolls thrive not because of their materials but because they deliver emotional connection—helping mothers and daughters bond through stories of history and identity. Every detail, from packaging to doll hospitals and theaters, was designed as an experience: “American Girl is story, not stuff.” Competitors selling cheaper dolls missed the job entirely.

Creating the Right Experiences

Christensen introduces the idea of a job spec—a blueprint translating customer struggles into actionable design. It maps desired progress, tradeoffs, competition, and obstacles. Once you have a job spec, you craft experiences solving those barriers. IKEA helps customers furnish entire apartments in one day by offering everything from flat-packed furniture to in-store childcare and cafés—building an end-to-end service around the job “Help me furnish my place today.”

Learning from Health Care and Technology

Medtronic’s pacemaker program in India succeeded not just through affordability but by redesigning the entire journey: screening clinics, fast financing, and patient counselors (“Sherpas”) who guided families through overwhelming hospitals. Uber and Amazon similarly master experiences. Uber doesn’t sell car rides—it sells predictability and safety, eliminating frustrations of taxis with real-time tracking and seamless payments. Amazon sells convenience and confidence through its customer reviews—helping buyers hire the right product while signaling who shouldn’t.

The Power of Purpose Brands

A purpose brand becomes synonymous with a job. You don’t say “get an overnight delivery”—you “FedEx” it. Companies like Keurig, Lunchables, or Milwaukee Tools built dominance through clarity: their products are verbs because they perfectly perform a job. Brands lose power when they forget their jobs (like Volvo drifting from safety). The reward for clarity is consumer loyalty and premium prices—because customers aren’t buying features, they’re hiring certainty.

Even the best experiences fail if organizations aren’t structured to deliver them consistently. In chapter 7, Christensen shows how great companies organize around Jobs to Be Done, integrating processes that reinforce progress at every step. From hospitals to car manufacturers and universities, success emerges when internal systems mirror the customer’s journey.

Processes as Competitive Advantage

Processes—the patterns of communication and decision making that shape action—are invisible from outside but define performance. Toyota’s production system and the Mayo Clinic’s coordinated patient scheduling exemplify this. At Mayo, a process manager ensures patients see all necessary specialists seamlessly, relieving anxiety and delivering the job “Help me feel cared for.”

SNHU’s Job-Oriented Processes

SNHU reorganized its admissions around the job of enabling adult learners to move forward quickly. Prospective students receive personal phone calls within minutes and transcript retrieval handled for them. Metrics shifted from “how many packets mailed” to “how fast a prospect gets an answer.” Complexity was removed from students and absorbed by SNHU’s internal processes—a hallmark of job-centered design.

OnStar and Validation Loops

Chet Huber’s OnStar achieved massive success by relentlessly integrating around its job: giving drivers peace of mind. When hurricanes struck, employees instantly expanded emergency services without waiting for managerial approval—because every team understood their job compass. The same focus let OnStar build faster tech-update processes outside GM’s bureaucratic cycle, ensuring the product never sold “last year’s version.”

Measuring What Matters

Job-focused organizations redefine metrics. Amazon, for instance, measures fastest delivery, lowest price, and vast selection—not internal cost efficiencies. When processes align with customer jobs, companies gain predictable growth and adaptability over time.

Even successful companies can lose sight of their original job. Chapter 8 warns that as organizations scale, they fall prey to the lure of data—measuring success with product metrics rather than customer progress. Christensen identifies three “fallacies of innovation data” that derail focus and growth.

1. Active vs. Passive Data

Early-stage innovators thrive on passive data—rich stories from real struggles. Once products launch, active data (sales, margins, benchmarks) floods in, seducing managers with crisp numbers. Yet these numbers describe operations, not customer causality. The railroad industry’s decline illustrates this: defining itself as a train company instead of a transportation solution, it ignored broader jobs people hired cars or planes to do.

2. The Fallacy of Surface Growth

Companies often pursue easy wins by selling more products to existing customers—“surface growth”—while forgetting their core job. The New York Times broadened content to do multiple jobs (entertainment, education, opinion) but became stretched thin. By contrast, Deseret News focused narrowly on “help me stay informed while true to my beliefs,” achieving revival through precision.

3. The Fallacy of Conforming Data

Managers distort reality to fit existing models. Data supports what leaders already believe instead of revealing truth. Nate Silver’s warning echoes here: people focus on signals confirming their worldview, not how the world actually works. When Christensen revisits the V8 brand, he finds it initially succeeded by solving the job “help me consume vegetables easily,” but later lost focus amid endless flavors. The result was confusion—a purpose brand diluted by obsession with product variation instead of customer progress.

The Cure: Active Management

Christensen urges leaders to actively manage the customer job, not delegate it to the data. Numbers should serve stories, not replace them. Otherwise, companies end up “treating symptoms” like doctors who fix blood pressure readings without curing the disease. Restoring focus on the job saves firms from competing on luck again.

In the book’s final chapters, Christensen and his coauthors explore how Jobs Theory transforms entire organizations and cultures. When a company adopts a clear Job to Be Done as its guiding mission, employees at all levels understand why their work matters and make autonomous decisions aligned with customer progress instead of bureaucracy.

Turning Vision into “Commander’s Intent”

Like armies guided by commander’s intent, jobs-focused organizations empower employees to act decisively without micromanagement. At Intuit, Sasan Goodarzi reframed TurboTax’s mission from “help customers fill forms” to “get taxes done without data entry.” Once this purpose was clear, creativity surged — teams innovated prefilled W-2 imports that simplified the experience. When employees understand the job (“taxes are done”), coordination becomes intuitive.

Aligning Around Meaning

Mission statements often sound noble but vague. Jobs Theory grounds them in reality. Unilever turned “help people live healthy lives” into the tangible job “help children in emerging markets survive to age five,” leading to innovations like color-changing Lifebuoy soap for proper handwashing. SNHU’s employees, guided by “help students make educational progress despite life’s obstacles,” routinely go above and beyond—calling at night, helping retrieve transcripts, even delivering diplomas in hospitals.

Cultural Transformation and Measurement

A job-centered culture unifies passion and accountability. Leaders then measure what truly matters: customer progress. Amazon tracks delivery time to the minute; SNHU measures whether graduates would “do it all again.” As Christensen notes, “What gets measured gets done,” but only if measurement reflects the customer’s success, not internal efficiency.

The Broader Vision

Christensen concludes with an inspiring reminder that Jobs Theory applies beyond business. Schools must understand that students hire education to “feel successful.” Health care providers must realize patients hire hospitals to “get well without anxiety.” Families, churches, and societies all seek progress—the same universal principle. When you learn to identify jobs in your own life, you stop competing on luck and start designing predictable progress.