2.2
Starting Points

Where to Start

Contrary to popular belief, great new value propositions Don’t always have to start with the customer. They do, however, always have to end with addressing jobs, pains, or gains that customers care about.

On this spread we offer 16 trigger areas to get started with new or improved value propositions. They start from either the customer, your existing value propositions, your business models, your environment, or business models and value propositions from other industries and sectors.

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Could you…

PROCESS
Spark Ideas with Design Constraints

OBJECTIVE

Force yourself to think outside of the box

OUTCOME

Ideas that differ from your “usual” value propositions and business models

Use design constraints to force people to think about innovative value propositions embedded in great business models. We outline five constraints of businesses whose value proposition and business model you can copy into your own arena. Don’t hesitate to come up with other ones.

Servitization

Constraint: Transform from selling a product-based value proposition to a service-based one that generates revenues from a subscription model.

Hilti shifted from selling machine tools to builders to leasing fleet management services to managers at construction companies.

Razor Blade

Constraint: Create a value proposition composed of a base product and a consumable product that generates recurring revenues.

Nespresso transformed the sales of espresso from a transactional business to one with recurring revenues based on consumable pods for its espresso machine.

Trendsetter

Constraint: Transform a technology (innovation) into a fashionable trend.

Swatch conquered the world by turning a plastic watch that could be made cheaply due to a reduced number of pieces and innovative production technology into a global fashion trend.

Low-Cost

Constraint: Reduce the core value proposition to its basic features, target an unserved or underserved customer segment with a low price and sell everything else as an additional value proposition.

Southwest became the largest low-cost airline by stripping down the value proposition to its bare minimum, travel from point A to point B, and offering low prices. They opened up flying to a new segment.

Platform

Constraint: Build a platform model that connects several actors with a specific value proposition for each.

Airbnb made private homes around the world accessible to travelers by connecting them with people who seek to rent out their apartments short term.

Tips

• Assign different constraints to different working groups if you have the opportunity to do so. It allows you to explore alternatives in parallel.
• Use constraints that represent the challenges in your arena, such as free value propositions, decreasing margins, and so on.

Download Constraint Cards

PROCESS
Invite Big Ideas to the Table with Books and Magazines

OBJECTIVE

Broaden horizon and generate fresh ideas

OUTCOME

ideas that build on relevant topics and integrate latest trends

Use best-selling books and magazines to generate fresh ideas for new and innovative value propositions and business models. It’s a quick and effective way to immerse yourself in various relevant and popular topics and build on current trends.

Bringing books into a workshop is like inviting the world’s best thinkers to brainstorm. This way you can afford a lot more of them at the same time.

1
Select books.

Prepare a series of books and magazines representing a trend, important topic, or big idea on a large table. Ask workshop participants to pick up a book each.

2
Browse and extract.

Participants browse their book and capture the best ideas on sticky notes. (45 min)

3
Share and discuss.

Participants share their highlights in groups of four or five people and capture their insights on a board. (20 min)

4
Brainstorm possibilities.

Each group generates three new value proposition ideas based on their discussions. (30 min)

5
Pitch.

Each group shares their alternative value propositions with the other groups.

Tips

• Select books about society, technology, and environment that push participants outside of their comfort zone.
• Avoid complicated business theories or methods.
• Mix in YouTube videos of keynote talks by the authors.
• Use napkin sketches to share your value proposition ideas.

Push vs. Pull

The push versus pull debate is a common one. Push indicates that you’re starting the design of your value proposition from a technology or innovation you possess, whereas pull means you’re beginning with a manifest customer job, pain, or gain. These are two common starting points, many of which we outlined previously. Consider both as viable options depending on your preferences and context.

Technology Push

Start from an invention, innovation, or (technological) resource for which you develop a value proposition that addresses a customer job, pain, and gain. In simple terms, this is a solution in search of a problem.

Explore value proposition prototypes that are based on your invention, innovation, or technological resource with potentially interested customer segments. Design a dedicated value map for each segment until you find problem-solution fit. Read more about the build, measure, learn cycle on.

Market Pull

Start from a manifest customer job, pain, or gain for which you design a value proposition. In simple terms, this is a problem in search of a solution.

Learn what technologies and other resources are required for each value proposition prototype designed to address manifest customer jobs, pains, and gains. Redesign your value map and adjust resources until you find a viable solution to address customer jobs, pains, and gains. More about the build, measure, learn cycle on.

EXERCISE
Push: Technology in Search of Jobs, Pains, and Gains

OBJECTIVE

Practice the technology-driven approach with no risk

OUTCOME

Improved skills

This push exercise starts with the solution

1
Design.

Design a value proposition based on the technology outlined in the press excerpt from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) by targeting a customer segment that might be interested in adopting this technology.

“Solar and aeolian sources are great candidates for the electricity generation of the future… However, solar and wind sources’ peak availability takes place at times that do not usually correspond to peak demand hours. Therefore, a way must be devised to store and later reuse the energy generated.

2
Ideate.

Come up with an idea for a value proposition using the compressed air energy storage.

EPFL has worked for over ten years on an original storage system: compressed air. The use of a hydraulic piston delivers the best system performance… The obtained high pressure air can be safely stored in bottles without losses until it is necessary to generate new electricity by expanding the gas in the cylinder. One of the advantages of our system is that it does not require rare materials.

3
Segment.

Select a customer segment that could be interested in this value proposition and would be ready to pay for it.

A spin-off has been created to develop this principle and create ‘turnkey’ electrical energy storage and retrieval units. In 2014, a 25 kW pilot will be installed at a photovoltaic park in Jura.… In the future, there will be 250 kW installations at first and 2,500 kW ones afterwards.”

4
Profile.

Sketch out the customer’s profile. Make assumptions about jobs to be done, pains, and gains.

5
Sketch.

Refine the value proposition by sketching out how it will kill customer pains and create gains.

6
Assess.

Assess the fit between the customer profile and the designed value proposition.

Tips

• Add design constraints to technology push exercises. Your organization might not want to address certain customer segments (e.g., B2B, business-to-consumer [B2C], specific regions, etc.). Or you might prefer certain strategic directions, for example, licensing rather than building solutions.
• Follow up on your customer assumptions by researching customers and producing evidence once you’ve selected a potentially interested segment.

Pull: Identify High-Value Jobs

Great value proposition creators master the art of focusing on the jobs, pains, and gains that matter. How will you know which of these jobs, pains, and gains to focus on? Identify high-value jobs by asking if they are important, tangible, unsatisfied, and lucrative.

High-value jobs are characterized by pains and gains that are…

Important

When the customer’s success or failure to get the job done leads to essential gains or extreme pains, respectively.

• Does failing the job lead to extreme pains?
• Does failing the job lead to missing out on essential gains?

Tangible

When the pains or gains related to a job can be felt or experienced immediately or often, not just days or weeks later.

• Can you feel the pain?
• Can you see the gain?

Unsatisfied

When current value propositions Don’t help relieve pains or create desired gains in a satisfying way or simply Don’t exist.

• Are there unresolved pains?
• Are there unrealized gains?

Lucrative

When many people have the job with related pains and gains or a small number of customers are willing to pay a premium.

• Are there many with this job, pain, or gain?
• Are there few willing to pay a lot?

High-value jobs

Focus on the highest-value jobs and related pains and gains.

Based on initial work by consultancy, Innosight.

EXERCISE
Pull: Job Selection

OBJECTIVE

Identify high-value customer jobs that you could focus on

OUTCOME

Ranking of customer jobs from your perspective

This pull exercise starts with the customer.

Imagine your customers are chief information officers (CIOs) and you have to understand which jobs matter most to them. Do this exercise to prioritize their jobs or apply it to one of your own customer profiles.

Tips

• This exercise helps you prioritize jobs from the customer’s perspective. It doesn’t mean you have to mandatorily address the most important ones in your value proposition; those might be outside your scope. However, make sure your value proposition does address jobs that are highly relevant to customers.
• Great value proposition creators often focus on only few jobs, pains, and gains, but do that extremely well.
• Complement this exercise with getting customer insights from the field and experiments that produce evidence.

	Does failing the job lead to extreme pains? Does failing the job lead to missing out on essential gains?	Can you feel the pain? Can you see the gain?	Are there unresolved pains? Are there unrealized gains?	Are there many with this job, pain, or gain? Are there few willing to pay a lot?	Focus on the highest value jobs and related pains and gains.
Jobs	Important	Tangible	Unsatisfied	Lucrative	High-value jobs
create value for corporation	•••	•	•••	••	= 9
design IT strategy	••	•	••	••	= 7
Scoring scale: · (low) to ···· (high)				Based on initial work by consultancy, Innosight.

Six Ways to Innovate from the Customer Profile

You’ve mapped your customer profile. What to do from here? Here are six ways to trigger your next value proposition move.

Can you…

Address more jobs?

Address a more complete set of jobs, including related and ancillary jobs.

With the iPhone, Apple not only reinvented the mobile phone but enabled us to store and play music and browse the web on one device.

Download trigger questions

Switch to a more important job?

Help customers do a job that is different from what most value propositions currently focus on.

Hilti, the machine tool manufacturer, understood that construction managers needed to keep schedules to avoid penalties, not only drill holes.Their fleet management solution addressed the former in addition to the latter.

Go beyond functional jobs?

Look beyond functional jobs and create new value by fulfilling important social and emotional jobs.

Mini Cooper created a car that became as much a means of transport as a statement of identity.

Help a lot more customers get a job done?

Help more people do a job that was otherwise too complex or too expensive.

High-end web data storage and computing power used to be reserved to big companies with large IT budgets. Amazon.com made it available to companies of any size and budget with Amazon Web Services.

Get a job done incrementally better?

Help customers better do a job by making a series of microimprovements to an existing value proposition.

German engineering and electronics multinational Bosch improved on a wide range of features of its circular saw that really mattered to customers and outperformed competition.

Help a customer get a job done radically better?

This is the stuff of new market creation, when a new value proposition dramatically outperforms older ways of helping a customer get a job done.

The first spreadsheet called VisiCalc not only introduced a new market for such tools but also ushered a whole new realm of possibilities across industries powered by easy, visual calculations.