Jobs to be Done Should Be Open and Free. Patents Holders Can Ruin It. Here’s How We Stop That

Figure 1. Until 2014, Tesla proudly displayed its patents…

If Jobs to be Done practitioners and advocates want:

• To trust that Jobs to be Done is evolved in a way that best helps everyone — and not for the benefit of one person
• To believe that the content they read is honest and objective — and is not secretly a sales pitch
• To experience a place that is open, collaborative, and fun — instead of one full of slanderous discord
• To be assured that they can safely apply Jobs thinking — and not worry about being sued

Then the community must not allow itself to be associated with patents, or people who hold patents.

This article will:

1. Remind everyone that the JTBD community was once an open, positive, and growing community
2. Show how patents and patent holders create a toxic atmosphere
3. Suggest that if we want JTBD to be relevant into the future and for the community to be a positive place, it needs to break any association with patents holders

A positive, growing community

Figure 2. (2014) David Wu and I presenting Jobs to be Done to members of Harvard Business School’s Growth and Innovation Team. I discussed “Jobs-As-Progress” and research about how people used selfie-sticks for “belonging” and “ice-breaker” Jobs.

Back in 2013, the JTBD community was small. Yet, it was collaborative, fun, and growing. Bob Moesta was cranking out his podcast, Chris Spiek had started the #jtbd hashtag, and I was blogging about my experiences using it to build products. I also co-organized the NYC JTBD Meetup — which we grew from 0 to over 500 members!

Because almost all off us were innovators in our own right — e.g. product managers, entrepreneurs, and designers — we didn’t care about who “owned” Jobs to be Done, gaining celebrity status from it, or trademarking anything. We were just trying to become better at making products that people will buy. This was our Job to be Done.

In 2014, Clayton Christensen’s team came to visit me, and I visited Clay’s office at Harvard (figure 2). They wanted to learn about JTBD and the idea of progress. They accepted that Jobs to be Done was incomplete, and still needed to evolve. This point of view is reflected in Competing Against Luck (Christensen 2016):

A theory never pops out of a researcher’s mind complete and perfect. Rather, it evolves and improves as people use it. Good theories actually need anomalies — things that the theory cannot explain — in order to improve.

I hope that you and the other readers of this book will find things that the Jobs Theory cannot yet explain…At the time of writing, I am developing ways for these theories to be improved collaboratively online and I welcome your thoughts.

Fast forward to today… and sadly, Christensen’s online community never happened. Most of the original community members have moved onto other things. The #jtbd hashtag is spammed by consultants promoting patented ideas. Slanderous articles and comments against me and Clayton Christensen are published across the internet…

What happened? Patents.

Patents Are Weapons that Stifle Progress

Figure 3. Tesla’s wall, before and after removing their patents

Tesla once proudly put its patents up for display. Then in 2014, they were all taken down (Figure 2). Here’s what Elon Musk wrote:

When I started out with my first company, Zip2, I thought patents were a good thing and worked hard to obtain them. And maybe they were good long ago, but too often these days they serve merely to stifle progress, entrench the positions of giant corporations and enrich those in the legal profession, rather than the actual inventors. After Zip2, when I realized that receiving a patent really just meant that you bought a lottery ticket to a lawsuit, I avoided them whenever possible.

Patents do exactly what Musk wrote: they stifle progress and are a lottery ticket to a lawsuit.

Defensively, they say “Stay away. This is mine!”

Offensively, they say “Pay up or I’ll sue!”

Patents are not tools for knowledge builders and truth seekers. They are weapons for the greedy, intolerant, and arrogant.

An open & evolving community is incompatible with patents and patent-holders

For several years, the Jobs to be Done community was growing and positive. The theory was being evolved for the benefit of everyone. In 2014, Clayton Christensen’s team told me their vision of evolving Jobs to be Done in an open-source way. This motivated me to participate.

However, patent-holders jeopardize that vision. Why? Because patent-holders:

1. Are motivated by personal gain. Is content created by a patent-holder for the benefit of everyone, or just themselves?
2. Will try to bend Jobs to be Done to fit their patents. Would they ever let Jobs to be Done evolve in way that is incompatible with their patents?
3. Create a toxic atmosphere. Will other community members be sued (figure 4)? Will they slander those who advance a version different from their patented interpretation (figure 5)?

I know people who believe they are practicing Jobs to be Done, but are really practicing ODI without a patent. They are in violation of a patent and don’t know it. I also know people who have chosen not to be involved with JTBD at all because of it’s association with patents.

If we want Jobs to be Done to grow and to evolve, we must follow Elon Musk’s lead and disassociate itself with patents and patent holders.

This means we should:

1. Be suspicious of content created and promoted by a patent holder
2. Not promote or share content whose aim is to bend JTBD to fit a patent
3. Ask patent holders to open-source their patents, if they want to participate in the community

I see these as our best bet for a future where Jobs to be Done continues to be relevant, free, and open. If we don’t do this, then Jobs to be Done falls victim to The Tragedy of the Commons, The Most Intolerant Wins and the trolls once again win.

Want to make progress with learning and applying JTBD theory?

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