Book Review: ‘Competing Against Luck’ by Clayton Christensen
A guide to answering the golden question, “ What causes a customer to purchase and use a particular product or service?”
Who should read it?
I recommend this book to anyone interested in consumer behaviour or that is seeking a guide to innovation. Whether you’re an entrepreneur looking for opportunities or an existing business manager looking for areas of growth, this book could be a very useful business tool.
What’s the ‘Big Takeaway’?
The crux of the book is that it provides you with a common language, process and guide for understanding why people choose to ‘hire’ or ‘fire’ certain products in their everyday struggle for progress. In other words, it aims to help you consistently and repeatedly answer the golden question of business:
“Why do consumers make the choices that they do?”.
What did I like?
What I liked about this book is that it is created with implementation in mind, providing extensive case study examples, and ‘Chapter Takeaways’ and ‘Questions’ at the end of every chapter to apply what you’ve just read.
What I didn’t like?
One possible downer is that there is a lot of repetition, repeatedly saying the same thing in a different way. It also makes itself out to be the answer to everyone’s prayers, but in reality it could be very difficult, if not impossible, to apply this theory to certain industries and products.
Chapters Summary
An Introduction
Chapter 1: The Milk Shake Dilemma
Chapter 2: Progress, Not Products
Chapter 3: Jobs In The Wild
The Hard Work — and Payoff — of Applying Jobs Theory
Chapter 4: Job Hunting
Chapter 5: How To Hear What Your Customers Don’s Say
Chapter 6: Building Your Resume
The Jobs To Be Done Organization
Chapter 7: Integrating Around A Job
Chapter 8: Keeping Your Eye On The Job
Chapter 9: The Jobs-Focused Organization
Chapter 10: Final Observations About The Theory Of Jobs
Further Information
If you’d like some more information to help you decide whether or not to read this book, or prefer to learn through video, follow this link to StartUp Nation’s full page of articles and videos.
