Freebie Clay Christensen, MIT Sloan Management Review, Article

The MIT Sloan Management Review have started releasing “to regularly preview selected, noteworthy articles online before they come out in our print edition. In another first, the full text of these articles will be available free to all for a limited time”.  Good on them.

This months article is from Clay Christensen – the very clever and fascinating innovator’s problem/solution chappie – and his new twist on marketing.  He says, “Product and customer characteristics are poor indicators of customer behaviour--demographics cannot explain why a man takes a date to a movie on one night, but orders in pizza to watch a DVD from Netflix the next.  When customers find that they need to get a job done, they ‘hire’ products and services to do the job. Managers need to understand the jobs that arise in customers' lives, for which their products might be hired!.”

Some of the article expands on a similar article he wrote for (I think) the Harvard business review late last year.  Well worth a read imho – even if just for the mental—rejig I got from reading the milk shake story on page 2.