Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice

A generation ago, Clayton Christensen revolutionized business with his groundbreaking theory of disruption—a way to predict how competitors will respond to different types of innovation. In this book, Christensen and his coauthors examine the other side of the puzzle: what causes growth, and how to create it.

After years of research, Christensen, Hall, Dillon, and Duncan show that the long-held maxim—that the crux of innovation is knowing more and more about the customer—is wrong. Customers don’t simply buy products or services; they “hire” them to do a job. Understanding customers does not drive innovation success. The key is understanding customers’ Jobs to Be Done. The Jobs to Be Done approach can be seen in some of the world’s most respected companies and fast-growing startups, including Amazon, Intuit, Uber, and Airbnb to name just a few.

This book carefully lays down the authors’ provocative framework, providing a comprehensive explanation of the theory, why it’s predictive, and, most important, how to use it to improve innovation in the real world.