Summary: Is education really a "job" if the student is forced or prompted to consume it in the way that we've designed it? There are a lot of great start-ups in the education space that are attempting to answer this question as they roll new products out into the market. How can start-ups in the education vertical apply the Jobs-to-be-Done Framework to their products if the student's consideration set is pre-determined for them? Should we focus on the teacher's jobs, the student's jobs, the administrator's jobs? This week we unpack each of these questions and discuss how JTBD can be applied in education. Listen to the Show Coming Up Next Week Next week we'll dive back into the tools and tactics of JTBD, and discuss interview tips, and the creation of the timeline. Make sure you don't miss upcoming episodes! Subscribe to Jobs-To-Be-Done Radio using <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/jtbd-radio">this feed.</a> iTunes/iPhone users can new subscribe to this Podcast in <a href="http://bit.ly/jtbditunes">iTunes</a>! In Case You Like Reading More Than Listening Hey, this is Doug Crets. We're talking again on Jobs-to-be-Done Radio. We're here with Chris and Bob. It's been another week. Thank you, guys, for joining us. Good to see you guys here again. Today, my thoughts are I wondered if Bob could right my ship here and tell me if I'm on the right track or if I'm on the wrong track. I was thinking education and I was thinking about how education in the public school system K-12 is like an obligatory forced product. I was wondering, could you even use Jobs-to-be-Done theory to think about education since kids are required to go to school. They are required to learn. How do you do Jobs-to-be-Done theory if the product isn't in a choice set? It's more, "This is what you have to do. You have to go to school every day and get it done"? Is that something off limits for Jobs-to-be-Done or am I thinking about Jobs-to-be-Done in the wrong way? Bob: No. The thing is, as much as you can say education is obligatory there are many choices that the kids have to make along the way. The fundamental premise of Jobs is that people want to make progress. Kids want to make progress. Kids want to get through school to get to college or to get into a job. It depends on their definition of "progress" and what they choose to engage with to help them make progress. So in some cases it's not that they are buying it and using money, but they are spending their time on it. Spending time can be seen as part of the equivalent. The other thing is there is a notion of consumption. The kids have to learn how to consume the education to demonstrate new behavior so they can get on to the next class or get on to the next college or get on to the next job. We've actually done some work in that area. Looking at how kids, for example, consume education and what teachers can do. If you think of the student as the consumer... Doug: Right. Bob: ...and it's the teachers' job and school's job to help the students make progress and consume. You'll find that one thing that is most interesting, most people talk about education as having a motivation problem. We interviewed 9th and 10th graders. Everything from kids who had good grades to, I'll say, medium grades, to bad grades, to kids who have dropped out. They were 11th graders and they dropped out. What you found was that they had all hired education to make progress. At some point, the kids who dropped out, I interviewed a couple of kids from a gang. What you found is that they felt they could make more progress in the gang than they could school. I don't believe there's a fundamental motivation problem. I think there is a blockage problem. I don't think the kids can consume what were giving them. Doug: So wait. We've got in 2010 I think there were 6.2 million, or something like,
