Glossary
Jobs-to-Be-Done (JTBD)
A framework that defines products by the underlying job a buyer "hires" them to do, rather than by their features or category.
Jobs-to-Be-Done (JTBD) is a framework popularized by Clayton Christensen that asks: when a buyer hires this product, what job are they hiring it to do?
The canonical JTBD format is: "When I [situation], I want to [motivation], so I can [outcome]."
JTBD is useful in competitive analysis because two products that look different on the surface can be hired for the same job — and two products that look identical can be hired for different jobs. The job is more stable than the product category, so tracking it reveals competitive overlap that category-based analysis misses.
A classic example: Linear and Notion are sold into different categories (project management vs docs/wikis). But for a 6-person engineering team, both can be hired for the same job: "When I need to coordinate work across people and time zones, I want one tool that holds the plan and the work product, so I can avoid context-switching costs." For that team, Linear and Notion compete directly — even though they don't show up on each other's competitor lists.
JTBD also reveals when a competitor's repositioning expands or contracts the job. When Notion added "AI workspace" to their hero, they expanded the implicit job from "shared docs" to "AI-powered productivity." That's a TAM expansion move and changes who they compete with.
Example
A marketing team using Mailchimp hires it for the job: "When I send a campaign, I want to reach my list, so I can drive engagement." When ConvertKit pitched the same team, ConvertKit had to compete on that same job — not on email-feature parity. A feature-by-feature comparison would have been irrelevant.
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