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It is quite rare for a company to open up and offer a true and detailed insight into their unique practices and experiences on their path to becoming more customer-centric. However, Marco de Polo from Roche Diabetes Care does exactly this in this interview with Martin Pattera.

Roche Diabetes Care is a global leader in integrated diabetes management and pioneers innovative diabetes technologies and services. Marco outlines what effects the implementation of the Outcome-Driven Innovation® mindset and methodology had on their company culture, organization and strategy. He explains what it meant for product development, commercial departments and top level management to work with this new approach. Finally he gives practical recommendations for companies that would like to implement Jobs-to-be-Done and Outcome-Driven Innovation® to evolve into a customer-centric organization.

Thank you Marco for sharing these valuable insights with our readers!

Martin: How did Jobs-to-be-Done and Outcome-Driven Innovation® help you uncover growth opportunities?

Marco: First of all, JTBD helped us to identify customer opportunities defined by underserved segments, served segments and overserved segments. This helped our organization to target the right segment for value creation and it was the key to informing and accelerating important business decisions.

What kind of business decisions were supported by Jobs-to-be-Done and Outcome-Driven Innovation® insights?

We use JTBD & ODI to inform three levels of decision making. First, we inform the strategy: The identified customer opportunities help us to decide where we want to play in the future (in which customer problem space and in which business), how we want to play in this business (with what solutions) and how we want to win.

The second category are decisions that help our product organizations to build the right product pipeline, so we can address the identified customer opportunities.

And third, we inform how commercial teams target the right customers in the market: Focusing on commercial targeting, driving messaging and positioning to help our organization to retain customers, but to also grow the market.

What was the impact of Jobs-to-be-Done and Outcome-Driven Innovation® on your product development?

The biggest impact we generated for product development was streamlining of the development pipeline. We had a clearer direction on which investments we should make in the early stages of product development. This helped our organization to minimize the waste of resources that occurs when you invest into the wrong solutions and develop those that actually never address unmet customer needs.

What is your experience regarding commercial departments when dealing with the customer insights identified by Jobs-to-be-Done and Outcome-Driven Innovation®?

My experience has been extremely positive with the Sales and Marketing department. They have a big appetite for more precise definitions of customer problems and customer needs, they want to understand why and when a need is unmet and they also want to understand the context. We invest heavily into visualizing the context around a job-to-be-done, for example by developing job and need-based customer journeys. JTBD helps us recognize where a certain job-to-be-done is in the progression of a disease like diabetes, and that helps the commercial department to identify where in the customer journey they need to target the right segments for the right product at the right time.

How did Jobs-to-be-Done and Outcome-Driven Innovation® actually affect your company’s bottom line results?

That’s a very challenging question. I wouldn’t say that there is one particular element that helps us to drive the bottom line, rather there are multiple elements. But the immediate impact that we see in our organization is the minimization of inefficiencies. So, we helped the organization to focus on the right priorities and invest into the right solutions early, increasing the likelihood that those solutions actually deliver a commercially viable business model later.

Apart from the business results, we want to talk about culture and mindset. My question here is: How did the introduction of Jobs-to-be-Done and Outcome-Driven Innovation® affect the innovation mindset and the culture within your company?

One of the most important effects on the innovation mindset is that we now have a common language to define what a customer need is, within our organization. And that’s been a struggle in the past. I always say: “How is it possible that an organization can deliver value to the market if value hasn’t been defined?” JTBD thinking helps to find a common definition of what a customer need is, and what the difference between a met and an unmet need is. It also helps us to understand what value metrics customers use, and to recognize if and how we can address important problems for them.
So it’s really about language and alignment in the organization! The key is also not to worry about what customers do today, but to try to understand what our customers want to achieve and/or avoid at the end of the day.

How did Jobs-to-be-Done and Outcome-Driven Innovation® affect the way you make decisions?

There are two ways of decision making: “evidence based decision making” versus “opinion based decision making”. We have a lot of subject matter experts in the organization, when it comes to technology and commercial business models. But at the front end, when it comes to understanding customers, it’s more difficult to generate evidence. The JTBD approach helps us to identify metrics that we can use to measure customer needs. ODI is a methodology that has a qualitative part followed by quantitative validation. So the jobs and the met and unmet needs, are to some extent validated. And thus we have more confidence in our decisions.

What is your experience with the combination of Jobs-to-be-Done and Outcome-Driven Innovation® insights with other types of insights that you might already have had in your corporation or that you generated in a different format?

Our challenge is that we have generated a lot of insights over the past years, based on different methodologies. And the question I am often confronted with is: “Why do we need additional research?” It is true that we’ve already done a lot of research, but when you look at the results, the metrics can’t be compared. So right now we’re trying to build consistency across our research approaches. We need to be able to compare opportunities across different stakeholders, for example payers, healthcare professionals, patients, caregivers and so forth. This will also allow us to understand what the ecosystem opportunities are, that means the met and unmet needs shared by multiple stakeholders. This is really important to understand if we want to generate new value.

Would you see Jobs-to-be-Done and Outcome-Driven Innovation® as a framework that supports a specific phase in the innovation process or does it cover the whole process?

I absolutely see it as a universal approach, it can be applied across the End-to-End process; like in the front end when we are searching for a customer or searching for new problems and then when we are searching for solutions and also at the end when we are searching for new business models. So it’s really the input for the entire End-to-End process and it’s also essential for commercialization. So I don’t think that ODI is limited to one specific business element.

Do you have experience with radical innovation or disruptive innovation successes related to Jobs-to-be-Done and Outcome-Driven Innovation®?

The radical innovation that we experience within Roche Diabetes Care is often related to technology innovation. But the commercial departments, who are very close to the market, are also exploring really disruptive business models. That’s certainly an area where JTBD & ODI helps in guiding the direction; not necessarily pinpointing where the opportunities are, but offering good directions and a good starting point.

What would be the first steps to take if Jobs-to-be-Done and Outcome-Driven Innovation® should be introduced in an organization?

Marco: I often hear of people trying to convince the top management that there is a good approach, or a good tool or a good process. That’s important, but I would also recommend building a grassroots movement and showing impact through results. That means running small projects that don’t require a lot of investment and showing results that prove that ODI implementation creates impact for your organization.

What would you recommend doing if someone plans to implement Jobs-to-be-Done and Outcome-Driven Innovation® on a broader scale to become a customer-centric organization?

The key is leading by example. You can’t just show up with a PowerPoint presentation and show what JTBD & ODI is and how great it has been working for other organizations. That usually doesn’t work, at least not in our organization. You have to show results and then you have to lead by example.

The other part is that you have to include other departments, and let them own the JTBD mindset and ODI approach. It can’t be the “job” of a single unit, right? So my team is responsible for customer insights, but the insights need to be owned by several departments, not only by my team. So you really need to approach this through a strong collaborative effort, so you can have other teams and other departments embrace the methodology as well. And then they will drive it as well.

What was the impact of Jobs-to-be-Done and Outcome-Driven Innovation® on your product development?

The biggest impact we generated for product development was streamlining of the development pipeline. We had a clearer direction on which investments we should make in the early stages of product development. This helped our organization to minimize the waste of resources that occurs when you invest into the wrong solutions and develop those that actually never address unmet customer needs.

Are there specific roles that you need to develop or that you need to align with Jobs-to-be-Done and Outcome-Driven Innovation® if you want to implement it in an organization?

That’s a very good and important question. There are multiple models that I’ve seen in organizations, such as the role of “catalysts”. Catalysts are people who are part of another department, but are trained in the methodology and are immersed into the content; they then become part of an internal community that multiplies and scales the department’s expertise. And most importantly, this can be part of the cultural transformation that an organization is pursuing. This is work in progress and we’re at the beginning of it though.

Where in your organization is Jobs-to-be-Done and Outcome-Driven Innovation® aligned with the top management level? Is there a certain top management position that maintains and supports it?

We get strong support from the senior executive management. They strongly believe in JTBD and the customer opportunity driven value creation process. My group belongs to the strategy and portfolio management unit, so we’re actually a neutral function. We don’t own any products and that’s a huge advantage, because we are not emotionally or in any other way attached to solutions. It’s rather the opposite: we must care about customer value and not about products. It is very important that the insights team is a neutral function within the organization, so that it can wear different “hats”.

You work together not only with product management teams, but also with the top management, especially when it comes to strategy development. How does this work in your organization?

One of the most important effects on the innovation mindset is that we now have a common language to define what a customer need is, within our organization. And that’s been a struggle in the past. I always say: “How is it possible that an organization can deliver value to the market if value hasn’t been defined?” JTBD thinking helps to find a common definition of what a customer need is, and what the difference between a met and an unmet need is. It also helps us to understand what value metrics customers use, and to recognize if and how we can address important problems for them.
So it’s really about language and alignment in the organization! The key is also not to worry about what customers do today, but to try to understand what our customers want to achieve and/or avoid at the end of the day.

How did Jobs-to-be-Done and Outcome-Driven Innovation® affect the way you make decisions?

We are currently driving this from a bottom up and top down approach. Therefore we developed the so-called “Lean Strategy Sprint Approach”. It’s a process that helps us to define where to play, how to play and how to win. The business teams need to own the results, but we deliver the content and the process together with other functions. The output of the strategy work is then owned by the senior executive management. We get very strong support to run this process. The JTBD is a very important puzzle piece, but there are many other puzzle pieces that are needed to inform the strategy.

When we talk about strategy development, there are two influencers: One influencer is technology and technology developments, and the other influencer is the market, market developments and customer needs. What is your experience in bringing these two aspects together to formulate a combined and comprehensive strategy?

We have to acknowledge that there is no right entry point into the value creation process. We can start with the customer problem, the unmet need and the customer opportunities; but it’s also okay to start with a technology first approach, because then we go back and focus on the question what customer problem that the technology solves; and if solved (= customer value), how we can generate business value.

At the end of the day, the organization should only care about customer value. There’s a need and there’s a solution, and if the solution addresses a highly unmet need, then there’s chance to generate value. We have to acknowledge that there is also a place for technology or solution first approaches. If the innovation process does not support a technology push approach, then we limit ourselves in searching and generating customer and business value.

If you could decide what to start with, what would you do first: understand customer needs or understand new technology possibilities? Where would you place the focus?

For us it’s really important to first get out of the office and to see and experience the environment, where we believe our customers face problems, challenges and barriers. For us the firsthand experience is absolutely key.

Today there are thousands of solutions that we could consider, and it is really difficult to decide which solution we should actually consider for value creation. Generating customer and business hypotheses and using them to narrow down the customer problems and needs, surfacing opportunity segments is a key activity. It’s really an iterative approach where we go out and talk to people, visit people, observe people in their natural environment; and from there we run experiments, exploratory and evaluative studies and so forth.

What is your future vision of the healthcare market 20 years from now? What will be different? What kind of developments will we expect to see?

That’s a very complex question. I would say, in future we need to help people improve their quality of life besides improving medical outcomes. As an organization, we want to achieve the best possible medical outcomes, but often the best possible medical outcomes are in a conflict with the desired quality of life outcomes of patients and their caregivers.

In order to improve the quality of life outcomes we must go beyond addressing the needs of the body – we must fundamentally understand people’s experiences, their fears, motivators, interactions as well as their mental models, beliefs and emotions. This a the key to offer solutions that are consuming less mental energy of people living with a chronic disease, and thus improve their quality of life.

I do believe that successful companies in the future will deliver “adaptive value”: solutions that are “smart” and thus can adapt to the needs of patients and their family members as well as to the needs of professional caregivers over time and across the entire journey of living with a chronic disease.

Thank you very much Marco. Let’s make the world a better place.

Yes, let’s! Thanks, Martin, for having me.

Thank you.

This interview was originally published by Martin Pattera on the Edizon Innovation Consulting blog.

About Edizon Innovation Consulting

Edizon is an international consultancy for customer-centric strategies and for product, service and business innovation. As experts in innovation consulting and strategy consulting, we are driven by our goal to support each of our clients in in achieving remarkable growth.

Therefore, we rely on a mindset that has revolutionized the way companies innovate. This mindset is called “Jobs-to-be-Done Thinking”. Over the last 11 years with our partner Strategyn, we have brought this mindset to life with our proprietary Outcome-Driven Innovation® (ODI) process.

About the author

Martin Pattera is a Managing Partner at Edizon. Martin holds an MBA from the Vienna University of Economics and Business and has over a decade of innovation experience. Prior to Edizon, he held key positions at Roland Berger Strategy Consultants and Mayr-Melnhof Karton. He has been the project manager of a large number of innovation projects, and has industry expertise in the fields of mechanical engineering, construction industry, energy management, information technology and medical devices.