NPD Phase 1.5: Introducing Value Proposition Canvas & Jobs-To-Be-Done
There is a critical step between your research phase (Phase 1) and roadmap planning phase (Phase 2) where you as a Product Manager need to work with your teams to define your own Value Propositions based on all the data points you’ve gathered. I’ll just call it Phase 1.5. Value Propositions will become very important assets when you and your team designs a roadmap. In this article, I will introduce two widely-adopted industry practices: Value Proposition Canvas (VPC) and Jobs-To-Be-Done (JTBD) and explain how these two practices above can feed into your roadmap planning.
Introducing VPC and JTBD
Value Proposition Canvas can basically help you ensure your product is positioned around what the customer actually values and needs.
VPC is a tool developed by Dr Alexander Osterwalder and was introduced to me together with the revolutionary Jobs-To-Be-Done concept while I was in business school (Thanks to Prof. Taillard!). The JTBD concept is explained later in this article.
After rigorously developing your VPC, you can successfully determine what your product should do to help your customers, how you should brand your product, how much you should price it, and how much time and cost you should invest on building it as well.
To complete your VPC, you need to fill in each of the key areas in both the Customer Canvas and the Product Canvas above in the following order.
Customer Canvas paints a detailed picture of the things the customer wants to do, as well as the positive state they want to attain and the negative state they want to avoid while trying to meet these needs.
Product Canvas, on the other hand, paints values the product can provide to relieve the customer’s pains and create their gains.
If we go too much into details to explain each element, it would be a thesis paper. So here, I will be providing quick synopses with the existing example from Adidas to show how they can feed into your roadmap. Although Adidas is not a tech company, you can easily transfer their practice into your own canvas.
Example: Adidas Parley
The official collaboration product line between Adidas and Parley to address environmental threats towards the oceans
And here is their VPC:
Customer Canvas
1. Jobs To Be Done (or Customers’ Jobs)
Jobs to be done are essentially what the customer hopes to accomplish in their daily lives (functional, social and emotional tasks) — the progress that the customer is trying to make in a given circumstance. As it’s the best definition, I’ll take a direct quote from Clayton Christensen, a Harvard Business School Professor who labeled JTBD as a theory, from the 2016 HBS article:
We all have many jobs to be done in our lives. Some are little (pass the time while waiting in line); some are big (find a more fulfilling career). Some surface unpredictably (dress for an out-of-town business meeting after the airline lost my suitcase); some regularly (pack a healthful lunch for my daughter to take to school). When we buy a product, we essentially “hire” it to help us do a job. If it does the job well, the next time we’re confronted with the same job, we tend to hire that product again.
Adidas Parley: The customer wants to be fashionable and stand out while performing well during their athletic activities.
2. Gains (or Gain Points)
Gain points are the ‘benefits’ that the customer expects and needs, what would delight customers and the things which may increase likelihood of adopting a value proposition.
Adidas Parley: The customer really puts benefits such as high quality material, wellness and comfort high when it comes to athletic fashion. Also the feeling of hope, optimism, and belonging to somewhere exclusive, as well as the motivation to contribute to a better future are also all something that delights them.
3. Pains (or Pain Points)
Pain points are the negative experiences, emotions and risks that the customer experiences in the process of getting the job done.
Adidas Parley: As much as the customer wants to feel fashionable, exclusive, optimistic while performing well, they are concerned about the cost and hassle of obtaining those feelings. They also have a general concern for new technologies as they are uncertain about the quality they produce.
Product Canvas
4. Gain Creators
Gain Creators are essentially how exactly the product or service creates customer gains and how it offers added value to the customer.
Adidas Parley: To create all those gain points for this particular customer, you can share ‘badge values’ that align with the customer’s values, use the storytelling approach to educate environmental issues such as ocean plastics, and produce limited edition of your product.
5. Pain Relievers
Pain Relievers are descriptions of exactly how the product or service alleviates customer pains.
Adidas Parley: We found that the customer had a particular concern for the cost and buying hassles. What if we add a 6 month warranty for the product they purchase? What if we build an online store? Would it alleviate their pains?
6. Products and Services
The products and services which create gain and relieve pain, and which underpin the creation of value for the customer. These are essentially the must-have features or benefits that you should be adding to your product you are developing, and without these, your product will not help the customer do the jobs.
Adidas Parley: Two must-haves in the new Adidas product line are: attractive and functional design as well as in-store return and deposit system. They realized that collaborating with Parley would help them solve customers’ problems and give them a strong competitive advantage.
After painting these canvases, you can also fill in your Value Proposition and Customer Segment as well.
Value Proposition
A Value Proposition in the VPC would usually highlights the product name, impact and/or target. However, what a value prop generally does is that it tells consumers why they should pay you rather than your competitors, and makes the benefits of your products or services crystal clear from the outset. It’s your “shortest attention-catcher” in your marketing channels such as your website, email campaigns, search ads, or social media profiles.
Adidas Parley: “FOR THE OCEANS. We’re fighting for plastic-free oceans by turning plastic trash into high performance sportswear.”
- [Product name] Adidas Parley
- [Impact] Environmental footprint of raw material production
- [Target] 1 million pairs of Adidas Parley shoes in 2017
Customer Segment
The customer segment is a group of people you are helping solve their problems with the product benefits you just defined. Depends on the industry or company, you can have multiple segments for one product, or multiple products for one segment (e.g., The customer may need more than one of your products to get their jobs done).
Adidas Parley: (Conscious) customers are what they simply defined as their target for the Parley line. However, you can go deeper and state what exactly these consumers are conscious about — if it’s possible.
Now that you have completed your market research and VPC, you can move onto designing a killer roadmap. Let’s go through each element in your roadmap in the next articles :)
End note: With all the images and videos, this article became a 6-min read article, but I promise that I’ll make sure to stick with my original intention to keep all of my articles under 5 minutes!
Source:
https://www.entrepreneur.com/encyclopedia/business-plan
https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/how-to-write-perfect-business-plan-a-comprehensive-guide.html
https://www.b2binternational.com/research/methods/faq/what-is-the-value-proposition-canvas/
https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/how-to-write-perfect-business-plan-a-comprehensive-guide.html
https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2016/04/27/value-proposition-examples
