Six Questions for Stephen Wunker
The jobs people want to get done can be both functional and emotional in nature. Which should innovators focus on first?
The first step is to design a product that satisfies one or more functional jobs in a superior way. But if you can also appeal to your customers’ emotional needs, you can create a breakthrough success. When Apple paid $3.2 billion to buy Beats Electronics in 2014, critics complained about the inferior quality of Beats’ headphones. But, despite competing against technically-superior products from Bose, Sennheiser and JBL, Beats earned a 40 per cent market share after just four years. Why? Because the company addresses emotional jobs.
From the beginning, Beats focused on getting its product into as many music videos, locker rooms and runway shoots as possible, so that they were associated with celebrity, glamour
